LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 


'By  L.  T.  Jacks,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  D.Litt. 


THE    LEGENDS    OF    SMOKEOVER 

THE  HEROES  OF  SMOKEOVER 

THE   FAITH    OF   A  WORKER 

THE  CHALLENGE  OF  LIFE 

THE  LOST  RADIANCE  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  RELIGION 

A    LIVING    UNIVERSE 

REALITIES  AND  SHAMS 

RELIGIOUS   PERPLEXITIES 


THE   LEGENDS 
OF    SMOKEOVER 


L.  P.  JACKS 


PRINCIPAL   OF    MANCHESTER   COLLEGE,   OXFORD; 
EDITOR  OF   "the   HIBBERT  JOURNAL" 


"Now  his  elder  son  was  in  the  field :  and  as  he  came  and 
drew  nigh  to  the  house,  he  heard  musick  and  dancing." 

PARABLE  OF  THE  PRODIGAL  SON. 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

—  A  — 

PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DEDICATED 

TO 

JOHN    BUCHAN 

IN  ADMIRATION  FOR  HIS  WRITINGS 

GRAVE  AND  GAY 

AND 

IN  GRATITUDE  FOR  WISE  COUNSEL 

GIVEN  IN  A  FORM 

WHICH  MULTIPLIED  ITS  VALUE 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

SMOKEOVER  AND  ITS  SMOKE  1 1 

I     THE  LEGEND  OF  RUMBELOW,  THE  BET- 
TING MAN 

CHAPTER 

I       THE   EVOLUTION   OF   RUMBELOW  27 

II        MR.  RUMBELOW'S  BUSINESS  FROM  WITHIN  40 

III        RUMBELOw's   FEAST  60 

II     THE  LEGEND  OF  THE  MAD  MILLIONAIRE 

I  SMOKEOVER   GROWS   RICH  81 

II  THE    PROFITEER  94 

III  MR.   hooker's  ADVISERS  115 

IV  THE  MAD   MILLIONAIRE   HAS  A  NEAR  SHAVE  128 
V  THE   TRANSFIGURATION   OF   A    MOUSE  151 

VI        MR.    HOOKER  FACES  THE  WORST  166 

VII       AND   DISCOVERS  THE   UNREAL  171 

VIII       AND  BEGINS  TO  MAKE   USE  OF   HIS   DISCOVERY  182 

IX       MR.     HOTBLACK     EXPOUNDS     THE  BEAUTY    OF 

BUSINESS  197 
X       AND    MR.     HOOKER     BEHOLDS    THE    BEAUTY    OF 

WOMEN  209 

III     THE  LEGEND  OF  MARGARET  WOLFSTONE 

I        MISS   WOLFSTONE    BECOMES    CLAIRVOYANT  229 

II        MISS      WOLFSTONE      PROVES      HERSELF      AN      AD- 
VENTURESS 244 
III       AND    EMBARKS    FORTHWITH    ON     A    DANGEROUS 

ADVENTURE  263 

vii 


O        N         T        E         N 


PACE 


IV     THE     LEGEND     OF     PROFESSOR     RIPPLE- 
MARK 

CHAPTER 

I       THE    EMERGENCE    OF    PROFESSOR    RIPPLEMARK        283 
II        MR.   HOOKER  VERIFIES  AN   INTUITION  304 

III  PROFESSOR   RIPPLEMARK   IS   PUT   TO   THE   QUES- 

TION 323 

IV  PROFESSOR    RIPPLEMARK    IS    EXTRICATED    FROM 

A  DIFFICULTY  339 

V       AND   FORTHWITH    FINDS   HIMSELF  IN  ANOTHER  357 

V     THE  LEGEND  OF  THE  LEAGUE 

1       A    DEN    OF    THIEVES  383 

II     "les  beaux  esprits  s'entendent"  399 


Vlll 


PART  ONE 

The  Legend  of  Rumbelow,  the  Betting  Man 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 


Smokeover  and  Its  Smoke 


np] 


'HE  city  of  Smokeover  is  renowned  for  size, 
momentum  and  obscurity.  It  contains  a  million 
inhabitants,  not  counting  those  in  the  cemeteries, 
who,  though  they  have  no  votes,  are  still  potent  in 
the  common  life.  There  are  ninety  miles  of  electric 
tramways,  two  thousand  public-houses,  four  hundred 
schools,  three  hundred  places  of  worship,  five  garden 
suburbs,  two  square  miles  of  slums,  a  municipal  Art 
Gallery,  a  branch  of  the  Society  for  Ethical  Culture, 
a  racecourse,  three  prisons,  a  university,  a  crema- 
torium, and  a  sewage  system  which  is  the  wonder  of 
the  world.  The  city  government,  with  a  Lord  Mayor 
at  its  head,  is  progressive,  especially  in  the  matter  of 
raising  the  rates.  Most  of  the  public  services  have 
been  municipalized.  The  consumption  of  coal  is 
enormous,  900,000  tons  being  carbonized  annually 
in  the  production  of  municipal  gas  alone.  The  water, 
brought  from  a  great  distance,  is  pure  and  abundant, 
but  the  light  is  dim  and  the  air  charged  with  the 
products  of  combustion.  The  odour  of  burnt  petrol 
pervades  the  streets  at  all  hours  of  the  day  and  far 
into  the  night. 

Smokeover  makes  all  sorts  of  things;  its  products 
are  as  varied  as  the  merchandise  of  Tyre,  inventoried 

11 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

by  the  Prophet  Ezekielj  the  worm  that  consumes 
them  never  dies,  and  the  fire  that  creates  them  is 
never  quenched.  But  the  chief  product  of  Smoke- 
over  is,  of  course,  itself  j  or  rather  its  million  in- 
habitants. More  than  any  of  its  manufactures,  more 
than  all  of  them  put  together,  these  men,  women  and 
children  represent  the  city's  main  contribution  to 
the  working  capital  of  the  universe.  What  they  are 
worth  nobody  knows  j  some  holding  that  they  are 
worth  nothing  at  all,  or  at  least  acting  upon  that 
assumption,  others  that  their  value  is  immense.  On 
this  question  hot  dispute  rages  in  Smokeover,  and  a 
professor  of  economics  in  the  local  university  has 
cynically  suggested  that  the  only  way  to  settle  the 
matter  would  be  to  turn  all  the  inhabitants,  rich 
and  poor,  into  slaves  and  sell  them  for  what  they 
would  fetch  in  the  open  market.  But  to  this,  and  to 
all  such  high-handed  methods,  the  citizens  show 
great  aversion.  Liberty  being  one  of  their  watch- 
words. A  few  are  haunted  by  a  secret  fear  that 
they  would  not  fetch  much,  if  put  up  for  auction. 
Speaking  broadly,  one  may  say  that  the  work  that 
has  to  be  done  in  Smokeover  from  day  to  day  is 
not  liked  by  the  majority  of  those  who  have  to  do 
it.  They  describe  their  labour  as  "laborious,"  which 
is  far  from  being  a  tautology,  and  consent  to  it  only 
on  condition  that  the  hours  are  reduced  to  a  mini- 
mum and  the  pay  increased  to  a  maximum,  reaching 
the  goal  of  their  desires  when  they  have  no  more 
of  it  to  do,  either  because  the  hour  has  struck  for 
knocking  off,  or  because  they  are  in  a  position  to 
"retire."  But  let  no  one  suppose  that  the  men  of 
Smokeover  spend  their  leisure  time  in  doing  nothing. 

12 


SMOKEOVER  AND  ITS  SMOKE 

They  spend  it  in  making  demands  on  the  labour  of 
their  fellow  citizens,  thereby  creating  a  vicious  circle 
in  the  life  of  the  cityj  since  the  more  leisure  one 
man  has  the  harder  another  must  work  to  keep  the 
first  amused  or  to  prevent  him  getting  into  mischief. 
A  few  employ  their  leisure  by  taking  walks  into  the 
country  and  contemplating  the  beauties  of  nature  j 
but  even  this  wears  out  their  shoes,  which  somebody 
else  has  to  mend.  On  the  whole,  the  inhabitants 
are  not  as  anxious  to  preserve  the  civilization  of  their 
city  as  they  are  glad  to  get  away  from  it.  This  be- 
comes evident  in  times  of  war,  when  the  young  men 
rush  to  the  colours  by  thousands.  Though  war  in 
itself  is  by  no  means  attractive,  it  often  becomes  so 
to  the  men  of  Smokeover  in  comparison  with  other 
things — for  example,  with  the  Smokeover  type  of 
peace. 

The  city  is  a  hive  of  contradictions.  If  you  are 
thinking  of  the  best  people  who  live  there,  you  would 
pronounce  it  a  model  of  what  such  places  should  bej 
but  if  you  are  thinking  of  what  the  best  people  have 
to  contend  against  in  the  worst,  you  would  say  that 
no  more  wicked  city  ever  existed  on  this  earth.  Your 
impression  will  vary  between  extremes,  according  as 
you  fix  attention  on  the  flowers  which  the  tree  bears 
on  some  of  its  branches  or  on  the  foul  juices  which 
feed  its  roots.  Both  extremes  are  reflected  in  the 
local  oratory,  some  orators  maintaining  that  Smoke- 
over is  progressing  towards  the  earthly  paradise, 
others  that  it  is  sliding  down  an  inclined  plane  towards 
a  dismal  catastrophe. 

In  the  suburbs  are  pleasant  houses,  thousands  of 
them,  with  gardens,  shady  trees,  shrubberies,  tennis 

13 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

lawns,  ponds.  Here  comfort  reigns  and  beauty  is  a 
frequent  visitor.  As  you  sit  or  wander  in  the  gardens 
you  may  see  the  tops  of  the  factory  chimneys  rising 
above  the  tops  of  the  trees  and  placidly  smoking  in 
the  distance,  and  may  reflect  that,  in  the  economic 
sense,  the  gardens  are  fed  by  the  smoke.  When  the 
wind  is  in  the  right  direction  a  smell  of  sulphur  will 
be  in  the  air;  you  will  also  observe  that  the  green 
of  the  shrubberies  is  not  of  the  purest;  careful  old 
ladies  may  sometimes  be  seen  wiping  the  smuts  off 
the  laurels  with  a  wet  sponge.  Here  are  lithe  and 
beautiful  girls,  in  white  frocks,  playing  tennis,  whose 
joyous  faces,  light  laughter  and  easy  movement  will 
help  you  to  believe  in  God,  and  to  say  "alPs  right 
with  the  world,"  or  at  least  nothing  radically  wrong 
with  Smokeover.  But  down  in  the  slums  are  women 
of  another  type,  who  fight  one  another  on  Saturday 
nights  with  hellish  outcries  and  bloody  faces,  while 
the  men  look  on.  These  will  help  you  to  believe  in 
the  devil,  or  to  fancy  that  you  are  in  hell  already. 
Which  indeed  may  be  the  fact,  hell  most  assuredly 
having  no  fouler  sight  to  show.  Yet  all  is  one.  The 
heaven  and  the  hell,  the  tennis-playing  sylphs  and 
the  gin-drinking  viragoes — the  smoke  of  Smokeover 
sustains  them  both. 

Three  main  interests,  the  political,  the  economic 
and  the  spiritual,  occupy  the  inhabitants  and  deter- 
mine the  general  form  and  pressure  of  their  lives. 
These  three  make  a  partnership,  an  alliance,  or,  as 
some  are  now  preferring  to  say,  an  entanglement,  in 
which  politics  are  unquestionably  predominant. 

The  political  interest  of  Smokeover  covers  the 
fortunes  of  the  world,  embracing  the  whole  net- 

14 


SMOKEOVER  AND  ITS  SMOKE 

work  of  warlike  relationships  on  which  the  fates  of 
empire  depend,  and  coming  to  a  head  at  frequent 
intervals  in  the  policies  of  rival  parties  at  the  elec- 
tions. 

The  economic  interest,  concerned  with  the  pro- 
duction of  what  the  text-books  call  "wealth"  and  the 
Lord's  Prayer  "daily  bread,"  has  to  adjust  itself  as 
best  it  may  to  the  political,  submitting  its  accumula- 
tions to  destruction  and  contenting  itself  with  what 
is  left  over,  whenever  the  politicians  go  to  war. 

The  spiritual  interest,  which  is  popularly  known  as 
"Education,"  comes  last,  and  has  to  adjust  itself 
to  the  other  two,  sometimes  to  each  singly,  sometimes 
to  both  together,  being  never  allowed  to  take  its  place 
at  the  common  table  until  the  appetites  of  the  more 
important  partners  have  been  satisfied. 

Thus  the  economic  interest  dances  attendance  upon 
the  political,  and  the  spiritual  on  both.  The  arrange- 
ment is  accurately  reflected  in  the  minds  of  the  in- 
habitants, which  have  become  so  habituated  to  this 
order  of  priority  as  to  be  unaware  that  it  exists.  A 
proposal  to  reverse  it  would  be  treated  by  most  of 
them  as  unthinkable.  "Reverse  what?^*  they  would 
ask;  and  when  you  told  them  what  you  propose  to 
reverse,  some  would  call  upon  the  god  of  Smokeover 
to  dash  you  to  pieces.  All  the  same,  the  inhabitants 
are  profoundly  restive  under  the  political  and  eco- 
nomic servitude  to  which  their  spiritual  interest  has 
been  reduced.  Not  knowing  what  is  the  matter  with 
them  they  blame  the  government,  and  can  think 
of  no  remedy  save  getting  a  new  one,  which  is  no 
sooner  elected  than  they  become  more  restive  than 
ever. 

15 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

In  normal  times  Smokeover  has  the  appearance  of 
belonging  to  peace,  and  of  taking  little  interest  in 
v/ar,  either  as  an  occupation  or  as  a  spectacle.  The 
city  has  no  fortifications,  while  the  only  cannon  it 
contains  are  mementoes,  soiled  by  the  droppings  of 
birds.  The  barracks  are  inconspicuous,  their  very 
existence  unknown  to  most  of  the  inhabitants.  For 
outward  and  visible  signs  of  regimentation  one  looks 
in  vain.  The  movements  of  the  population,  the 
surging  crowds  at  the  stations,  the  goings  to  and 
fro  in  the  busy  streets,  suggest  a  fermentation  rather 
than  a  march  j  each  person  appears  to  be  going  some- 
where, the  totality  nowhere.  Though  these  people 
are  descendants  of  a  conquering  race,  citizens  of  an 
empire  built  up  by  conquest,  they  have  no  martial 
airs,  and  seldom  swagger,  save  when  they  are  in  their 
cups.  But  when  placed  under  discipline  they  soon 
acquire  the  manage  of  arms  and  the  military  carriage  j 
the  face  of  the  shopman  loses  its  pallor,  the  shrunken 
chest  of  the  waiter  fills  out,  the  mincing  barber  comes 
home  to  his  astonished  friends  with  the  robust  frame 
and  the  hardy  countenance  of  war. 

In  which  particular  there  is  an  analogy  between 
the  men  of  Smokeover  and  the  industries  by  which 
they  earn  their  daily  bread.  For,  just  as  these  un- 
soldierly  people  can  on  the  briefest  notice  be  con- 
verted into  excellent  soldiers,  so  by  a  transformation 
no  less  rapid  the  chimneys  which  to-day  are  smoking 
for  peace  will  to-morrow  be  smoking  for  war;  while, 
down  below,  the  iron  bedsteads  are  turning  into 
bombs,  the  ploughshares  into  gun-barrels,  the  prun- 
ing-hooks  into  bayonets,  and  nitro-glycerine  is  being 
concocted  in  the  dyeing  vat.     These  sudden  trans- 

16 


SMOKEOVER  AND  ITS  SMOKE 

formations  have  given  rise  to  the  longest  of  the 
Smokeover  Legends,  which  will  appear  in  its  place. 
Indeed,  when  we  closely  scrutinize  these  things 
our  first  impression  that  Smokeover  is  a  peace-made 
city  begins  to  waver.  Beneath  the  outward  semblance 
of  unreadiness  for  war,  and  of  preoccupation  with 
other  things,  we  discern  an  inner  structure  in  the  life 
of  the  city  which  suggests  a  very  close  adjustment 
to  the  war-making  needs  of  a  militant  civilization. 
Many  features  of  the  place  which  seem  at  first  sight 
to  favour  peace,  turn  out,  on  closer  examination,  to 
favour  war.  The  religion,  for  example.  This  is 
Christianity,  which  no  man  construes  as  a  religion  of 
strife.  But  the  God  worshipped  by  the  Smokeover 
Christians  has  managed  somehow  to  acquire  qualities 
that  commend  him  to  the  military  mind.  He  rules 
the  universe  under  a  system  of  inviolable  law  and 
punishes  mutineers  with  death,  essentially  a  God  of 
regimentation  and  discipline  in  the  popular  concep- 
tion of  Him,  and  a  hard  hitter,  easily  acclimatized  to 
the  atmosphere  of  the  drill  ground  and  ready  to 
become  a  God  of  Battles  on  the  turn  of  a  phrase. 
Of  all  the  vocations  and  properties  of  Smokeover 
none  can  be  converted  more  swiftly  to  the  uses  of 
war  than  its  religion  and  its  God.  So  with  its  mo- 
rality. This  rests  on  the  idea  of  duty^  variously  in- 
terpreted by  the  philosophers,  but  recognized  at  once 
by  the  men  of  Smokeover  as  that  which  England  ex- 
pects them  all  to  do  when  a  battle  has  to  be  fought. 
So  it  comes  to  pass  that  whenever  a  call  goes  forth 
for  fighting  men  in  Smokeover,  religion  and  morality, 
the  Churches  and  the  Society  for  Ethical  Culture, 
cry  out  with  one  voice  to  the  young  men,  "Enlist, 

17 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

and  we  will  go  with  you  into  the  field,"  the  clergy 
themselves  setting  the  example  by  becoming  military 
chaplains. 

And  what  shall  we  say  of  the  "economic  system," 
of  the  trade,  the  manufactures,  the  business,  the 
wage-earning  and  the  profit-making  that  go  on  from 
day  to  day?  These,  too,  look  peaceable  enough.  But 
observe  the  "system"  with  a  closer  eye,  and  what 
do  you  find?  You  find  that  wealth  in  Smokeover 
is  so  distributed  that  it  can  be  easiest  got  at  when 
wanted  to  furnish  the  commissariat  of  war.  Which 
is  the  easier — to  tax  and  borrow  from  ten  million- 
aires or  from  a  million  men  having  ten  pounds 
apiece?  There  are  exactly  ten  millionaires  in  Smoke- 
over.  Is  that  an  accident?  And  who  can  fail  to  see 
that  the  distribution  of  wealth  in  time  of  peace  is 
the  basis  for  the  distribution  of  power  in  time  of 
war?  Take  the  statistics  of  rich  and  poor.  Lo  and 
behold,  they  roughly  display  the  proportion  of  offi- 
cers and  privates  contributed  by  the  city  to  the  recent 
war.  Is  that  an  accident  either?  What  a  war-mak- 
ing civilization  demands  is  a  relatively  small  class  of 
the  rich  and  well-to-do  to  furnish  the  money  and  the 
officers,  and  a  relatively  large  class  of  the  poor  to 
fill  the  ranks  and  clean  up  the  mess.  Exactly  what 
you  will  find  in  Smokeover. 

On  all  grounds  therefore  we  shall  err  if  we  take 
Smokeover  at  its  face  value  as  a  peace-made  or  a 
peace-making  city.  In  the  foreground  of  the  picture 
are  the  slums  and  the  suburbs,  the  chimneys  and  the 
tennis  lawns,  the  factories  and  the  mansions,  the 
churches  and  the  taverns,  the  throng  in  the  street 
and  the  crowd  at  the  football  match  j  in  the  back- 

18 


SMOKEOVER  AND  ITS  SMOKE 

ground  are  marching  hosts  and  bloody  battles  j  and 
between  the  two  run  links  of  meaning  and  purpose, 
which  so  connect  them  that  foreground  and  back- 
ground combine  together  into  one  consistent  whole. 
The  transition  from  peace  to  war  in  our  city  is  not 
violent,  as  some  think,  but  natural  and  easy.  In  a 
war-making  world  Smokeover  stands  ready  for  use  at 
the  shortest  notice,  and  with  the  least  possible  breach 
with  existing  habits  of  mind.  One  may  compare  the 
inhabitants  to  a  mighty  shoal  of  fishes  imprisoned  in 
a  far-flung  and  invisible  net,  which  encloses  so  vast 
an  area  of  the  ocean  that  the  fishes  may  swim  and 
disport  themselves  for  hundreds  of  miles,  and  re- 
produce their  kind  generation  after  generation,  with- 
out once  discovering  that  they  are  in  a  cruel  trap. 
When  war  needs  the  fishes  the  net  is  drawn  in. 

The  city  has  an  imposing  coat  of  arms,  bearing 
the  legend  Per  ardua  ad  astra;  which  means,  when 
translated  into  the  vernacular,  "Go  ahead."  In  the 
local  oratory,  not  the  least  among  the  Smokeover 
products,  the  stars  are  sometimes  mentioned  j  but  in 
the  popular  mind  they  are  objects  of  little  importance, 
being  much  obscured  by  the  canopy  of  smoke  which 
the  manifold  industries  of  the  place  pour  into  the 
circumambient  sky.  To  the  business  men  who  govern 
the  city — most  admirably,  so  they  say — the  idea  of 
guiding  them  either  by  the  stars  or  to  the  stars  would, 
if  seriously  pressed,  seem  somewhat  ridiculous.  They 
read  what  is  written  on  the  coat  of  arms  as  a  general 
injunction  to  Smokeover  to  widen  the  streets,  to  clear 
insanitary  areas,  to  municipalize  gas,  electricity  and 
water,  to  extend  the  tram-lines  into  the  suburbs  and 
to  raise  the  rates — in  short,  to  go  ahead,  keeping  well 

19 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

abreast  of  the  times.  And  the  city  responds,  not, 
however,  with  a  reckless  plunge,  but  with  a  creeping 
movement,  so  slow  that  the  individual  inhabitants  are 
not  conscious  of  it  until  it  has  carried  them  a  measur- 
able distance,  but  so  irresistible  in  its  momentum 
that  if  you  get  in  the  way  there  will  be  nothing  left 
of  you  to  tell  the  tale. 

But  whither  is  Smokeover  going? — that  is  the 
question.  As  we  have  seen  it  makes  no  pretence  of 
going  to  the  stars,  in  spite  of  the  legend  on  its  coat 
of  arms.  But  if  not  to  the  stars,  where  else?  In 
the  year  1740  George  Whitefield,  preaching  in  the 
Bear  Pit,  told  the  inhabitants  they  were  going  straight 
to  hellj  whereupon  there  was  a  panic,  attended  by 
many  conversions.  But  those  were  the  days  when 
Smokeover  believed  in  Original  Sin  and  in  the  book 
of  Genesis,  and  had,  in  consequence,  a  distinct  idea  of 
its  place  in  the  universe  and  of  yet  more  dangerous 
places  in  the  immediate  vicinity.  But  nowadays  it 
has  no  such  idea,  mistaken  or  otherwise.  The  in- 
habitants do  not  bother  about  the  universe,  having 
more  important  affairs  to  look  after.  They  know 
of  course  their  place  on  the  map,  know  it  better  than 
their  fathers  did  in  the  days  when  maps  were  scarce 
and  inaccurate;  but  in  the  universe  they  are  com- 
pletely lost.  There  is  not  a  soul  among  them,  from 
the  Bishop  to  the  man  who  empties  the  dust  bins, 
who  could  tell  the  citizens,  with  a  confidence  like 
that  of  George  Whitefield,  the  exact  whereabouts 
of  Smokeover  in  the  general  scheme  of  things.  What 
wonder  then  that  nobody  knows  whither  Smokeover 
is  going?  And  yet  it  goes  ahead  all  the  time,  think- 
ing of  the  universe,  when  it  thinks  at  all,  as  a  place 

20 


SMOKEOVER  AND  ITS  SMOKE 

where  cities  cannot  go  wrong  provided  they  are  big 
enough,  produce  plenty  of  smoke  and  have  the  right 
men  on  the  city  council. 

The  momentum  of  this  advance  is  little  understood 
by  those  of  the  citizens  who  would  convert  Smoke- 
over  into  the  New  Jerusalem.  They  are  apt  to  deal 
with  the  city  as  though  it  were  a  stationary  object, 
ready  to  be  turned  in  this  direction  or  that  by  the 
impact  of  the  Ideal.  But  when  a  mass  so  enormous 
moves  forward,  even  though  the  pace  be  no  greater 
than  a  snaiPs,  an  earthquake  is  needed  to  turn  it 
from  its  course.  So  it  is  with  the  movement  of 
Smokeover.  Beneath  the  changes  that  take  place  on 
the  surface,  which  are  important  and  visible  to  the 
eye,  there  is  the  invisible  urge  of  the  total  mass, 
creeping  forward  in  a  path  marked  out  for  it  by 
history  and  by  the  mental  habits  of  the  million  in- 
habitants— a  prodigious  and  terrible  force.  During 
the  recent  war,  which  was  a  kind  of  earthquake,  the 
momentum  of  the  city  seemed  for  once  to  have  met 
its  match j  it  received  a  check;  conditions  looked 
favourable  for  a  radical  change ;  and  the  hopes  of  re- 
construction ran  high.  Had  reconstruction  begun 
then  and  there,  a  new  birth  might  have  happened, 
and  the  face  of  Smokeover  definitely  turned  itself 
towards  the  stars.  But,  alas,  the  opportunity  could 
not  be  seized!  By  common  consent  reconstruction 
had  to  wait  till  the  war  was  over.  Nobody  was  ex- 
pected to  begin  just  yet,  for  plainly  nothing  could 
be  done  until  the  Germans,  who  were  planning  re- 
construction on  a  model  of  their  own,  had  been  thor- 
oughly defeated.  The  delay  was  fatal.  No  sooner 
was  the  war  at  an  end  than  the  momentum  of  the 

21 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

city,  which  had  gathered  energy  in  the  interval,  re- 
sumed its  mastery  over  the  lives  of  the  inhabitants. 
For  it  was  instantly  apparent,  even  to  the  dullest 
minds,  that  unless  Smokeover  smoked  harder  than 
ever  there  would  be  a  famine  in  the  land.  In  a 
moment  the  radiant  dream  had  vanished,  a  curtain 
was  drawn  over  the  vision  of  the  stars,  and  the  wise 
men  of  the  place,  having  no  alternative,  were  chang- 
ing their  note  from  the  heavenly  to  the  earthly  key. 
The  Bishop,  the  Lord  Mayor,  the  Principal  of  the 
University,  the  President  of  the  Free  Church  Coun- 
cil, the  President  of  the  Ethical  Society,  the  local 
members  of  Parliament,  the  leader  of  the  Labour 
Party,  the  Chairmen  of  the  Banks,  the  Captains  of 
Industry  and  all  the  others,  domestic  and  imported, 
whose  mission  it  was  to  guide  Smokeover  to  the  stars, 
joined  their  voices  with  one  accord  in  urging  the 
city  to  smoke  its  hardest,  or,  as  they  phrased  it,  "to 
produce  more."  Instead  of  arresting  the  monster 
in  his  course  they  found  themselves  riding  on  his 
back,  and  praising  the  smoke  that  went  up  from  his 
nostrils.  They  scrubbed  him  and  they  cleaned  him, 
they  planted  trees  between  his  scales,  they  built  gar- 
den suburbs  behind  his  ears,  they  tied  bunches  of 
flowers  to  his  lashing  tail,  they  did  all  they  could  to 
make  him  a  presentable  monster.  But  he  all  the  time 
crept  on,  taking  them  whithersoever  he  would,  while 
the  stars  shone  through  the  gathering  murk  with  a 
dimmer  light  and  seemed  less  important  than  ever — 
save  perhaps  for  a  brief  period  when  a  coal  strike 
extinguished  the  fires  below.  In  plain  speech,  Smoke- 
over fell  back  at  a  bound  into  the  old  smoky  ways 
that  had  made  it  what  it  was,  disporting  itself  as  be- 

22 


SMOKEOVER  AND  ITS  SMOKE 

fore,  and  unconscious  that  it  was  still  held  captive 
in  the  far-flung  net  of  war.  Is  not  the  momentum 
of  this  city  a  prodigious  and  terrible  thing? 

All  gospels  for  the  reformation  of  Smokeover,  all 
revolutions  for  its  overthrow,  seem  doomed  to  reduce 
themselves  in  like  manner  to  the  simple  formula 
"Make  more  smoke."  The  momentum  of  the  place, 
which  rules  the  minds  as  well  as  the  bodies  of  the 
inhabitants,  will  not  suffer  it  to  be  otherwise.  Un- 
less your  gospel  or  your  revolution  can  express  itself 
in  smoke-making  terms,  Smokeover  will  have  none 
of  it.  This  is  the  acid  test  of  truth,  the  standard  of 
righteousness  and  the  canon  of  practicability.  You 
may  borrow  your  principles  from  the  highest  heaven 
of  invention  J  you  may  begin  in  the  City  of  Godj  no 
one  will  object;  but  no  one  will  believe  until  you 
give  these  shining  things  an  intelligible,  smoke-mak- 
ing application.  In  all  this  Smokeover  is  reaping  the 
fruits  of  the  second  of  the  two  great  crises  in  the 
history  of  civilization.  The  first  took  place  when  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  was  captured  by  politics  in  the 
age  of  Constantine ;  the  second  when  it  was  captured 
by  economics  in  the  age  of  Smokeover.  Both  cap- 
tures were  brought  about  by  the  momentum  of  things. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  war  there  arose  in  this 
city  a  group  of  five  persons,  two  women  and  three 
men,  who,  for  reasons  which  the  Legends  tell,  re- 
belled against  these  conditions.  Rebels  in  the  vulgar 
sense  they  were  notj  for  they  attacked  no  govern- 
ment and  shot  nobody  in  the  back.  At  the  peril  of 
their  fortunes,  their  lives  and  their  reputation  for 
sanity,  they  resolved  to  oppose  the  momentum  of 
Smokeover  and  to  strike  for  a  kingdom  not  founded 

23 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

on  smoke.  At  first  the  resolution  was  taken  by  each 
one  singly.  Later  on  they  found  one  another  out, 
as  loyal  spirits  are  apt  to  do,  and  formed  a  con- 
spiracy, splendid  but  perhaps  quixotic,  against  the 
canopy  of  smoke  that  hung  over  their  city  and  hid 
the  light  of  the  stars  from  their  fellow  citizens. 
How  they  came  to  find  one  another  out  and  to  lay 
their  plans  will  be  told  in  these  Legends. 

They  were  all  great  souls  j  all  had  drunk  the  cup 
of  amazement  and  rubbed  elbows  with  death  j  and 
since  the  psychology  of  great  souls  is  widely  different 
from  that  of  little  ones  (a  point  overlooked  in  the 
text-books)  some  persons  may  find  a  difficulty  in 
believing  that  such  beings  ever  walked  the  earth,  or 
existed  at  all.  Even  the  Author  himself,  who  had 
not  created  these  Legends,  but  merely  collected  them 
in  their  birthplace,  has  often  wondered  at  the  strange 
doings  he  has  had  to  transcribe.  On  the  whole  he  is 
inclined  to  believe  that  the  five  conspirators  were 
real  people.  If  so,  and  if  on  reading  these  pages  they 
should  recognize  themselves  under  the  disguise  here 
assigned  to  them,  he  presents  them  with  his  apologies 
for  the  many  lies  he  has  had  to  tell.  It  was  neces- 
sary to  tell  lies  in  order  to  give  the  public  a  truthful 
impression  of  what  these  five  great  souls  were  after. 
All  legends  do  this. 

That  Smokeover  should  have  produced  a  literature 
of  legend  is  in  itself  a  sufficiently  remarkable  fact. 
As  the  birthplace  of  legend  no  city  could  have  a  more 
unpromising  look.  When  the  Author,  visiting  the 
city  to  collect  these  stories,  explained  his  errand  to 
the  wise  men  of  the  place,  they  seemed  both  as- 
tonished and  amused,  and,  after  whispering  among 

24 


SMOKEOVER  AND  ITS  SMOKE 

themselves  for  some  minutes,  during  which  the 
Author  suspected  that  his  reputation  for  sanity  was 
being  canvassed,  they  informed  him  with  a  smile  that 
Smokeover  was  not  Iceland  and  that  he  had  evidently 
made  a  mistake  as  to  his  whereabouts.  When  he 
replied,  with  some  warmth,  that  he  knew  perfectly 
where  he  was,  and  that  Smokeover  was  far  too  dirty 
to  be  mistaken  for  any  other  place,  and  has  posed 
the  wise  men  with  a  few  questions  about  Iceland 
and  its  Sagas  which  they  could  not  answer,  they 
changed  their  ground  and  asked  him  whether  legends 
were  really  what  he  wanted,  and  not  rather  the  plot 
for  a  novel.  If  so,  they  added,  they  could  supply 
him  with  plenty.  On  this  the  indignation  of  the 
Author  broke  bounds;  it  seemed  to  him  an  offensive 
thing  that  he  should  be  suspected  of  not  knowing 
the  difference  between  a  legend  and  a  novel;  and 
so  the  parties  separated  with  mutual  contempt,  the 
wise  men  convinced  that  the  Author  was  mad,  the 
Author  convinced  that  the  wise  men  were  fools. 

It  was  only  after  protracted  search  that  he  came 
upon  the  first  traces  of  the  Smokeover  Legends,  of 
which,  from  certain  points  in  the  appearance  of  the 
place,  he  had  never  doubted  the  existence.  For 
though  to  the  casual  observer  Smokeover  might  seem 
far  too  dim  a  spot  to  be  the  home  of  phantasy,  there 
were,  nevertheless,  in  the  hidden  parts  of  its  structure, 
a  few  features  which,  closely  examined,  looked  un- 
commonly like  points  of  contact  with  an  invisible 
world. 

Now  it  is  an  invariable  rule  in  the  growth  of  litera- 
ture that  legends  originate  at  the  places  of  transit 
where  ideal  things  pass  over  into  actualities.     They 

25 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

haunt  the  bridges  between  the  visible  world  and  its 
heavenly  counterpart  j  they  gather  at  the  fords  and 
ferries  which  carry  the  traffic  of  the  eternal  values 
across  the  River  of  Forgetfulness  into  the  scene  of 
their  temporal  manifestations.  Two  or  three  of  these 
bridges,  all  in  the  very  heart  of  Smokeover,  the 
Author  was  able  to  find.  There  he  would  linger, 
confident  that  he  would  not  have  long  to  wait,  often 
averting  his  eyes  or  holding  his  nostrils  (for  one  of 
the  places  reeked  with  sin),  but  with  the  listening 
organ  at  the  utmost  tension  of  expectancy,  ready  for 
the  smallest  voice.  Murmurs  and  whisperings  soon 
began,  which  grew  little  by  little  to  the  form  of 
intelligible  speech.  The  first  Legend  to  come  to  the 
Bridge  and  become  fully  articulate  was  that  of  Rum- 
below  the  Betting  Man.  Translated  into  the  ver- 
nacular it  ran  as  follows. 


26 


CHAPTER  ONE 

The  Evolution  of  Rumbelow 

MR.  ARTHUR  RUMBELOW,  senior  partner 
in  the  great  betting  firm  of  Rumbelow,  Stally- 
brass  &  Corker,  was  an  incarnation  of  the  gambling 
spirit  and  one  of  the  greatest  gamesters  of  any  age. 
He  had  graduated,  with  the  highest  honours,  on  the 
Turf,  and  then,  with  the  Ring  as  a  point  of  depar- 
ture, had  gradually  extended  his  sphere  of  operations 
until  it  embraced  the  world.  He  was  ready  to  lay 
odds  on  most  events  in  the  heavens  above  and  on  the 
earth  beneath.  "The  things  that  interest  mankind," 
he  was  wont  to  say,  "are  the  things  on  which  you  can 
bet."  To  great  and  giddy  heights  had  he  come, 
where,  invisible  to  the  gross  vision  of  the  multitude, 
he  played  his  part  as  the  builder-up  and  the  puller- 
down  of  human  fortunes — the  mentor  of  theologians, 
the  scourge  of  philosophers,  the  prompter  of  the 
Press,  the  secret  counsellor  of  kings.  The  orators 
declaimed,  the  parties  fought,  the  voters  voted,  the 
cabinets  sat,  the  parliaments  made  laws,  the  diplo- 
matists lied;  but  Mr.  Rumbelow  pulled  invisible 
strings  behind  them  all.  By  a  nod  or  a  word  or  a 
telegram  he  could  upset  the  plans  of  the  wariest 
statesman  and  make  monarchs  tremble  on  their 
thrones — a  man  mighty  in  the  casting  down  of 
strongholds. 

27 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

Mr.  Rumbelow  was  of  unknown  parentage.  In 
the  back  parlours  of  public-houses,  in  the  smoking- 
rooms  of  clubs,  at  the  dinner  tables  of  millionaires, 
strange  stories  were  told  about  his  father,  and  yet 
stranger  about  his  mother  j  but  as  these  have  never 
been  verified  and  are  compromising  to  the  parties 
concerned  they  shall  not  be  repeated.  So  much  how- 
ever may  be  said:  they  connected  Mr.  Rumbelow 
with  one  of  the  noblest  families  on  the  earth. 

His  earliest  recollections  were  of  going  round  to 
country  wakes  and  fairs  with  a  drunken  rascal  who 
kept  a  Coco-nut  Shy,  and  went  by  the  name  of  Rum- 
below. This  man,  when  he  was  sober,  gave  it  out 
that  the  boy  Arthur  was  his  sonj  but  when  he  was 
drunk  he  would  tell  another  tale,  which  gave  rise 
to  the  stories  aforesaid.  In  vino  Veritas — to  this  ex- 
tent at  least  that  Arthur  was,  most  assuredly,  not 
Rumbelow's  son. 

The  boy's  duties  were  to  look  after  the  coco-nuts, 
to  throw  them,  when  knocked  off  the  stands,  to  the 
successful  competitors,  and  then  to  replace  them  with 
others,  while  his  master,  at  the  other  end  of  the  show, 
blew  a  trumpet  and  took  the  money. 

At  the  age  of  ten  he  began  his  studies  of  the  Doc- 
trine of  Probability,  counting  up  the  hits  and  misses, 
and  recording  them  each  day  with  a  piece  of  chalk 
on  the  sides  of  the  caravan  in  which  he  lived  with 
his  reputed  father.  When  the  sides  of  the  caravan 
were  covered  with  figures  the  boy  would  stare  at 
them  for  hours  in  the  intervals  of  business,  and 
finally  evolved  a  formula  which  he  communicated 
to  his  master.  The  result  was  that  the  Rumbelow 
firm  was  able  to  offer  "shies"  at  three  a  penny  in- 

28 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RUM  BELOW 

stead  of  two — the  price  hitherto  ruling  the  market. 
It  was  the  first  benefit  conferred  on  the  public  by 
the  genius  of  Arthur  Rumbelow:  he  had  reduced  the 
price  to  the  consumer.  But,  of  course,  it  led  to  bad 
feeling  in  the  trade.  The  Rumbelow  firm  was  re- 
garded by  the  other  proprietors  as  a  blackleg  or  pirate 
undertaking.  There  are  two  methods  of  making 
money:  the  one  by  selling  things  dear;  the  other, 
far  more  lucrative,  by  selling  them  cheap.  From  the 
very  beginning  Mr.  Rumbelow  was  a  convinced  be- 
liever in  the  second  and  the  implacable  enemy  of  all 
who  practised  the  first.  The  hostility  was  reciprocal. 
On  one  occasion  the  stand  was  wrecked  by  a  mob  in- 
cited for  the  purpose,  and  the  two  Rumbelows  griev- 
ously pelted  with  their  own  coco-nuts,  insomuch  that 
all  would  have  been  lost  had  not  the  young  Rumbe- 
low, counter-attacking  with  inconceivable  fury, 
launched  a  monster  nut  full  in  the  face  of  the  lead- 
ing assailant,  who  was  laid  out  for  dead.  After  this 
victory  the  trade  acquiesced  in  the  inevitable,  and  the 
price  of  the  sport  all  over  the  kingdom  was  brought 
down  to  the  Rumbelow  level.  Cut-throat  competi- 
tion had  done  its  work.  Coco-nut  shying  became 
more  popular,  the  importation  of  coco-nuts  increased, 
and  the  inhabitants  of  the  South  Sea  Islands  began 
to  grow  rich.  We  live  in  a  world  where  everything 
is  connected  with  everything  else. 

The  capital  needed  for  starting  a  Coco-nut  Shy  is 
not  large.  In  proportion  to  the  funds  invested  it 
probably  yields  as  rich  a  return  as  any  other  line  of 
business  known  to  man.  All  you  require  to  begin 
with  is  ten-shillings^  worth  of  coco-nuts,  a  dozen 
props  to  poise  them  on,  a  box  of  wooden  balls,  a 

29 


THE  LEGENDC  OF  SMOKEOVER 

canvas  screen,  with  your  name  on  it,  to  arrest  the 
missiles,  a  trumpet  to  summon  and  stimulate  the 
sportsmen,  and  a  hand-barrow  to  transport  the  equip- 
ment from  place  to  place.  For  labour,  one  boy  will 
be  enough,  an  orphan  by  preference,  and  of  a  suit- 
able age  to  be  chastised  with  a  strap  v/ithout  risk 
of  reprisals.  You  will  li\^e  iii  the  open  air,  travel 
much,  see  all  the  wakes  and  fairs  in  the  country, 
which  are  well  worth  seeing,  pay  neither  rent  nor 
rates,  and,  if  your  hobby  takes  that  form,  may  prac- 
tise bigamy  with  small  risk  of  detection.  The  life 
will  be  easy  and  sporting,  the  bad  debts  none  and 
the  profits  immense.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  when  the 
Social  Revolution  confiscates  private  property  it  will 
not  overlook  so  flagrant  an  instance  of  the  vices  in- 
herent in  a  capitalist  system.  There  are  Coco-nut 
Shies  that  pay  over  a  thousand  per  centum  and 
scandalously  sweat  their  employees.  The  young 
Rumbelow,  for  instance,  who  made  the  fortunes  of 
his  master's  business,  was  never  paid  more  than  five 
shillings  a  week,  was  cruelly  strapped,  fed  with 
rotten  coco-nuts  and  compelled  to  sleep  in  that  corner 
of  the  caravan  which  was  fullest  of  fleas.  It  was  a 
little  out  of  keeping  with  all  this  that  Rumbelow 
the  elder  was  himself  a  social  revolutionary  of  ad- 
vanced views  and  insatiable  volubility.  He  might 
often  be  seen,  when  the  show  had  closed  down,  on 
the  village  green  or  at  the  street  corner,  urging  a 
knot  of  youths  with  cigarettes  in  their  mouths  and 
caps  stuck  on  the  sides  of  their  heads  to  rise  in  mass 
against  their  oppressors. 

There  are  many  trades  which,  whether  from  over- 
sight or  favouritism,  enjoy  a  like  immunity  from  the 

30 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RUMBELOW 

zeal  of  the  reformer.  Arthur  Rumbelow,  having 
begun  life  in  one  of  them,  was  quick  to  find  others 
of  a  similar  nature.  Under  the  mental  discipline 
afforded  by  these  vocations  he  developed,  as  we  shall 
presently  see,  a  brain  which  was  more  than  a  match 
for  all  the  Finance  Ministers  of  Europe,  whether 
of  the  conservative  or  the  revolutionary  type.  At 
the  period  of  his  great  prosperity  he  was  wont  to  say 
that,  however  much  the  community  might  subtract 
from  his  enormous  wealth  by  way  of  ransom,  he 
would  undertake,  in  six  months,  to  extract  from  the 
community  twice  as  much,  and  that  without  the  least 
risk  of  interference  by  the  State.  By  these  means 
Mr.  Rumbelow  became,  in  due  course,  a  most 
dangerous  manj  he  acquired  an  art  by  which  he 
could  capture  institutions,  even  the  most  democratic, 
for  his  own  endsj  and,  had  it  not  been  for  that  high 
moral  nature  which  he  inherited  from  unknown  an- 
cestors, there  is  no  telling  what  desolations  he  might 
have  wrought  on  the  earth.  But  we  are  anticipating. 
One  night,  after  a  particularly  violent  speech  for 
social  justice,  Mr.  Rumbelow  the  elder  retired  to  a 
neighbouring  public-house,  drank  himself  full  of 
fiery  spirits  and  went  staggering  home  with  a  fixed 
resolve  to  strap  Arthur,  on  the  ground  that  he  was  a 
sanguinary  aristocrat,  within  an  inch  of  his  life.  Ar- 
rived at  the  caravan  he  proceeded  to  put  his  plan  into 
execution.  But  Arthur,  who  was  now  sixteen,  re- 
sisted j  there  was  a  scuffle,  and  the  great  Coco-nut 
King  fell  down  dead.  In  the  interior  of  the  caravan 
was  a  lady  with  whom  Mr.  Rumbelow  had  just  con- 
tracted a  bigamous  alliance.  This  lady,  on  seeing  the 
dead  body  of  her  lord  stretched  out  at  the  foot  of 

31 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

the  caravan  steps,  fled  shrieking  into  the  night  and 
was  never  heard  of  again.  There  was  an  inquest  j  a 
verdict  of  death  from  alcohol  j  a  funeral  of  the  fallen 
hero  under  the  Red  Flag;  after  which,  no  other  heirs 
or  assigns  forthcoming,  Arthur  took  possession  of  the 
business — goodwill,  coco-nuts  and  all. 

His  first  acts  were  to  burn  the  contents  of  the  cara- 
van, to  fumigate  its  interior  with  sulphur  and  to 
wash  down  the  walls  with  boiling  water.  He  then 
took  the  money  that  was  in  the  cash-box,  went  down 
town,  bought  himself  a  fashionable  suit  of  clothes 
and  a  bottle  of  eau-de-Cologne,  had  a  hot  bath,  his 
hair  cut  and  his  hands  manicured,  dined  at  an  ex- 
pensive restaurant,  and  was  in  time  to  open  business 
when  the  fair  began  at  half-past  seven  in  the  evening. 
Next  day  he  went  to  a  firm  of  decorators,  where  he 
ordered  the  repainting  of  the  caravan  in  black,  gold 
and  cream-white,  according  to  a  design  which  he  had 
drawn  on  a  piece  of  paper,  at  a  cost  of  £40,  half  of 
which  he  paid  on  deposit;  then  to  a  furniture  shop, 
where  he  bought  some  kitchen  utensils,  a  bookshelf, 
a  brass  bedstead,  an  armchair  and  a  water-colour 
picture;  then  to  a  bookshop  for  Todhunter's  Algebra 
and  Shakespeare's  works.  Lastly  to  a  maker  of  musi- 
cal instruments,  from  whom  he  ordered  a  silver 
bugle,  the  firm  having  only  brass  ones  in  stock. 
There  was  money  in  the  cash-box  to  pay  for  all  that, 
and  much  more. 

Hence  that  dainty  caravan  which  arrests  the  eye 
of  the  artist  as  he  wanders  through  the  country  fair; 
hence  that  courteous  and  well-dressed  young  gentle- 
man who  summons  you  to  the  sport  by  the  call  of  a 
silver  bugle,  and  sometimes  plays  a  merry  tune  into 

32 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RUMBELOW 

the  bargain}  hence  that  sudden  outbreak  of  a  craze 
among  the  young  women,  who  crowd  the  Rumbelow 
stand  j  hence  the  roaring  business  of  the  reconstituted 
firm.  There  are  dark  looks,  of  course,  and  foul 
words  among  rival  proprietors  j  there  is  more  sinister 
talk  of  cut-throat  competition  j  and  in  the  neighbour- 
ing public-houses,  towards  closing  time,  mention  is 
frequently  made  of  a  fierce  dog  to  be  let  loose,  of 
a  head  to  be  bashed  in  with  a  silver  bugle,  of  a  so- 
and-so  caravan  to  be  raided  and  burnt.  But  all  that 
comes  to  nothing.  For  among  the  purchases  of 
Arthur  Rumbelow  there  is  one  not  mentioned  in  the 
list  above — a  revolver  and  a  box  of  cartridges.  The 
conspirators  know  it.  They  know  also  that  the  eyes 
of  Arthur  Rumbelow  are  vigilant  and  that  his  long 
white  hands  are  very  quick — a  dangerous  man  even  at 
this  early  period. 

Four  years  after  this  Arthur  Rumbelow  was  the 
owner  of  twenty-five  Coco-nut  Shies,  and  had  a  well- 
appointed  ofiice  in  the  city  of  Smokeover.  Every 
month  his  operations  extended  and  some  competitor 
was  absorbed  or  driven  out  of  the  market.  Coco-nut 
shying  was  fast  becoming  not  only  a  popular  but  a 
fashionable  sport;  titled  ladies  and  the  wives  of  Cab- 
inet Ministers  might  sometimes  be  seen  taking  their 
turn  with  pot-boys  and  housemaids  at  the  Rumbelow 
stands.  Wherever  the  great  legend,  "Rumbelow's 
Mammoth  Coco-nuts"  displayed  its  folds,  it  was, 
to  the  aristocracy,  a  guarantee  of  style,  and  to  the 
proletariate,  of  good  value. 

And  so  it  went  on  until  the  rumour  spread  in  finan- 
cial circles  that  Rumbelow  controlled  the  entire  Coco- 
nut Shying  of  the  United  Kingdom.  Then  the  whole 

33 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

country  caught  the  fever  and  began  to  resound  with 
the  crash  of  the  falling  nuts  and  the  shouts  of  the 
competitors.  The  invalid  heard  them  on  his  couch, 
the  student  at  his  desk,  the  worshipper  in  his  church. 
Professors  of  History  compared  it  to  the  Dancing 
Mania  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  wrote  articles  in  the 
reviews.  A  new  business  sprang  into  existence  under 
Rumbelow's  creative  touch — that  of  providing  pri- 
vate "Shies"  for  country  houses,  seaside  hotels,  golf 
clubs  and  Atlantic  liners.  A  committee  of  sporting 
Members  of  Parliament,  egged  on  by  the  wife  of  a 
Minister,  commissioned  Rumbelow  to  erect  a  "Shy" 
in  a  basement  room  of  the  House  of  Commons,  for 
the  refreshment  of  tired  legislators.  Bishops  ordered 
them  for  their  palaces  to  keep  the  younger  clergy 
out  of  mischief  at  ordination  times,  while  a  certain 
Dean,  who  had  become  a  "dead  shot"  at  the  game 
and  a  terror  to  the  whole  Church,  suddenly  sprang 
into  fame  as  one  of  the  foremost  theologians  of  his 
time.  Meanwhile  Rumbelow,  travelling  en  'prince 
in  the  South  Seas,  was  buying  up  every  coco-nut 
plantation  he  could  lay  his  hands  on. 

Then  one  day  the  news  was  flashed  by  cable  that 
Rumbelow  has  sold  the  whole  concern.  Shies,  plan- 
tations, goodwill  and  all,  to  an  American  syndicate 
for  a  million  dollars.  The  news  fell  like  a  thunder- 
clap. From  that  moment  the  doom  of  Coco-nut 
Shying,  as  a  progressive  sport,  was  sealed.  Nothing 
so  intensely  British  could  flourish  under  the  Stars  and 
Stripes,  and,  beyond  that,  nothing  the  Americans  had 
to  offer  could  make  good  the  loss  of  magnetic  con- 
tact with  the  master  mind  of  Rumbelow,  which  had 
been  from  first  to  last  the  actuating  force  of  the 

34 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RUMBELOW 

whole  development.  And  when  later  it  became 
known  that  the  American  syndicate  was  composed  of 
persons  interested  in  the  manufacture  of  chewing- 
gum,  and  that  their  object  was  to  develop  its  export 
to  the  British  Isles j  and  when  boxes  of  this  odious 
commodity  began  to  appear  on  British  stands  in  place 
of  legitimate  coco-nuts,  the  disgust  and  indignation 
of  the  sporting  public  knew  no  bounds.  Since  then 
all  kinds  of  vile  substitutes  have  been  offered,  and 
Coco-nut  Shying,  as  everybody  knows,  has  gone  to 
the  dogs.  A  case  is  on  record  of  a  fair  in  a  north- 
country  town  where  the  objects  on  the  stands  were, 
not  even  boxes  of  chewing-gum,  but — nefandum 
dictu — frozen  sheep's  heads  from  South  America! 
Naturally  the  Shy  in  the  basement  of  the  House  of 
Commons  has  been  cleared  out,  and  the  room  is  now 
used  for  Lost  Property.  The  dainty  caravans  have 
been  sold  to  enthusiasts  for  the  Simple  Life,  and  the 
sweet  challenge  of  the  Silver  Bugle  is  heard  no 
more. 

On  the  close  of  this  chapter  in  his  history  Rumbe- 
low  disappeared  entirely  from  the  public  view.  For 
five  years  he  remained  hidden,  and  there  is  nothing 
but  conjecture  to  fill  the  gap.  Some  said  that  he 
was  lovemaking,  a  school  in  which  so  far  he  had 
neither  committed  errors  nor  won  distinctions. 
Others  that  he  had  retired  into  the  wilderness,  that  he 
was  meditating  great  things,  and  would  presently 
return  on  the  wings  of  the  storm.  Others  that  he 
was  travelling  on  the  Continent  and  secretly  in- 
doctrinating the  unconverted  nations  in  the  Gospel  of 
Sport.  Others  that  he  was  studying,  under  an  as- 
sumed name,  in  a  foreign  university.     Others  that 

35 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

he  had  been  shipwrecked  on  an  island  in  the  Southern 
Seas  and  was  married  to  a  dusky  bride. 

In  each  and  all  of  these  rumours  there  lurked  an 
element  of  truth.  For  certain  it  is  that  when  the 
five  years  were  elapsed  Rumbelow  suddenly  re- 
appeared on  the  Turf,  accompanied  by  a  woman  of 
extraordinary  beauty,  whom  he  introduced  as  his 
wife.  It  was  the  great  race  meeting  of  the  year,  and 
observers  noticed  that  as  Rumbelow  moved  about 
among  the  Ambassadors  and  their  wives  on  the  Grand 
Stand  he  conversed  fluently  with  each  in  his  own 
tongue,  while  they,  on  their  part,  seemed  to  accept 
the  pair  as  members  of  their  own  fraternity.  Some 
thought  that  the  lady  was  an  American,  judging  by 
the  vivacity  of  her  manner;  others  that  she  was  a 
Russian,  judging  by  the  brilliance  of  her  beauty j 
and  this  seemed  to  be  confirmed  when  Mr.  Rumbe- 
low was  heard  to  converse  with  the  Russian  Am- 
bassador in  that  language. 

The  next  news  was  that  he  had  purchased  the  coun- 
try seat  of  a  nobleman,  that  a  great  architect  was  re- 
modelling its  defective  features  and  building  in  the 
castle  grounds  a  private  chapel  or  sanctuary  in  a  novel 
style,  which  some  said  was  that  of  a  Shinto  temple  j 
that  immense  house  parties,  in  which  persons  of  every 
class  were  mingled  without  social  friction,  were  con- 
stantly being  entertained;  that  Rumbelow  had  made 
a  law  that  all  inmates  of  the  house,  whether  guests 
or  domestics,  should  address  his  wife  as  "My  Lady"; 
that  this  was  willingly  done  both  by  Princes  and 
revolutionaries;  and  that  a  member  of  the  Inde- 
pendent Labour  Party  having  once  ventured  to  ad- 
dress her  as  "Comrade"  was  promptly  ordered  to 

36 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RUMBELOW 

pack  up  his  traps.  All  this  gave  rise  to  much  specu- 
lation, which  rose  to  fever  height  and  spread  all  over 
the  world  when  it  was  noised  abroad  that  the  German 
Emperor  was  spending  a  week-end  in  the  Castle,  and 
that  the  Lord  Chancellor  was  another  of  the  guests. 

Meanwhile  great  things  were  happening  in  the 
neighbouring  city  of  Smokeover,  where  Mr.  Rum- 
below  still  maintained  his  business  headquarters. 
Here  he  had  entered  into  partnership  with  the  bet- 
ting firm  of  Stallybrass  &  Corker,  of  which  he 
quickly  made  himself  the  master.  It  was  an  active 
and  malign  concern,  but  shamefaced,  furtive  and 
obscure,  hiding  itself  away  in  a  back  street.  Under 
the  magic  touch  of  Rumbelow's  genius  it  underwent 
a  rapid  transformation,  both  as  to  its  inner  character 
and  as  to  its  outward  manifestation,  in  a  year's 
time  he  had  installed  the  business  in  a  magnificent 
block  of  offices  on  the  corner  site  of  two  main  thor- 
oughfares, while  a  cloud  of  telegraph  wires  con- 
centrating on  the  roof  bore  witness  to  world-wide 
ramifications,  and  almost  shut  out  the  light  of  the 
sun,  never  strong  in  Smokeover. 

What  was  going  on  inside?  One  of  the  greatest 
wonders  of  the  age.  Have  you  ever  paused  in  the 
midst  of  your  scientific  preoccupations  and  trembled 
before  the  terrible  truth  that  in  human  affairs, 
whether  on  the  large  scale  or  the  small,  whether 
in  the  fate  of  nations  or  the  state  of  your  own  ner- 
vous system,  no  man  knows  what  is  going  to  happen 
next?  On  that  high  mystery  Mr.  Rumbelow's  busi- 
ness was  founded.  It  had  been  revealed  to  him, 
whether  by  inspiration  from  above  or  below  no  man 
can  say,  that  horse-racing  is  only  one  of  a  million  un- 

37 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

certainties  on  which  men  may  gamble.  He  was 
prepared  to  gamble  methodically  on  most  of  them. 
For  example  there  was  the  Department  of  Poli- 
tics. Here,  if  so  disposed,  you  could  bet  with  Mr. 
Rumbelow  on  the  fate  of  Ministries  in  your  own  or 
any  other  country,  on  the  issue  of  elections,  on  prob- 
able majorities,  on  the  chances  of  particular  states- 
men to  get  into  the  Cabinet  or  to  be  offered  this 
portfolio  or  that.  You  could  bet  on  the  chances  of 
So-and-so  being  made  a  bishop  or  a  Regius  Profes- 
sor, and  there  was  nothing  to  prevent  the  candidate 
backing  himself.  If  a  measure  was  before  Parlia- 
ment you  could  bet  on  its  passing  into  law.  If  a 
revolution  was  threatened  you  could  bet  on  its  occur- 
rence j  if  an  agitation  was  in  progress  you  could  bet 
on  its  success.  Mr.  Rumbelow  was  not  only  pre- 
pared to  bet  with  the  public  on  these  and  a  hundred 
such-like  things,  but  also  to  furnish  the  Press  for  an 
adequate  fee  with  accurate  and  absolutely  trust- 
worthy information  of  the  way  the  public  was  bet- 
ting j  every  night  the  cloud  of  telegraph  wires  was 
alive  with  messages  recording  the  daily  odds.  At 
the  time  when  Rumbelow  was  in  his  glory  there  was 
hardly  a  leader  writer  in  London  or  the  provinces 
who  would  have  dared  to  compose  his  article  without 
a  telegram  from  the  great  bookmaker  at  his  elbow. 
In  the  jargon  of  the  journalists'  clubs  he  was  known 
as  "the  barometer"  J  the  question  "How  is  the  bar- 
ometer to-night?"  meant,  "What  are  Rumbelow's 
latest  odds?"  His  influence  on  the  Press  was  im- 
mense. 

It  has  been  said,  by  an  accomplished  student  of 
human  nature,  that  if  ever  a  New  Messiah  should 

38 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  RUMBELOW 

appear  in  the  midst  of  our  confused  and  aimless  civi- 
lization, he  would  be  regarded  by  three-fourths  of 
his  contemporaries  as  an  unmitigated  scoundrel,  and 
not  recognized  in  his  true  character  until  after  he  had 
been  cast  out  of  the  vineyard  and  killed.  From  this 
we  cannot  argue,  in  strict  logic,  that  all  men  whom 
the  world  condemns  as  unmitigated  scoundrels  are 
necessarily  Messiahs.  But  it  does  seem  to  give  a 
chance  to  one  of  them.  Was  Mr.  Rumbelow  that 
one?  Perhaps  the  sequel  will  show.  Certain  it  is 
that  at  the  stage  of  his  evolution  to  which  Mr.  Rum- 
below had  now  arrived  no  Churchman  of  any  de- 
nomination would  have  dared  to  risk  his  reputation 
by  spending  a  week-end  with  the  bookmaker  in  his 
country  house.  But  he  had  round  him  a  small  band 
of  devoted  disciples,  some  of  whom  were  prepared 
to  maintain  that  he  was  the  greatest  Strategist  of  his 
time.  They  affirmed — with  what  truth  will  be  seen 
hereafter — that  he  had  taken  in  hand  the  two  most 
powerful  forces  of  existing  civilization,  which  are 
cupidity  and  the  love  of  gambling  j  that  he  had 
harnessed  them  to  the  sciences,  and  that  in  doing 
this  he  had  betrayed  a  prescience  wholly  lacking  in 
those  who  condemned  him. 


39 


CHAPTER  TWO 

Mr.  Rumbelow's  Business  from  Within 

YOU  are,  let  us  suppose,  a  friend  of  Mr.  Rum- 
below,  and  have  received  from  him  a  visiting 
card  on  which  he  has  written  "Show  this  gentleman 
over  the  Office  and  give  him  the  fullest  information. 
To  Heads  of  Departments.  A.  R."  So,  leaving  your 
motor  in  front  of  the  great  entrance,  you  pass  into 
a  spacious  hall  adorned  with  pillars  of  coloured 
marble,  and  are  accosted  by  a  stately  commissionaire 
to  whom  you  show  the  card.  "Which  Department 
will  you  see  first,  sir?"  he  asks.  "Oh,"  you  answer, 
"the  first  that  comes — any  you  like."  He  invites  you 
to  enter  the  lift  and  stops  at  the  first  landing.  Oyer 
a  glass  door  you  see  the  words  inscribed  "Political 
Department."  "Wait  a  moment,  sir,  while  I  inform 
the  Head,"  says  the  commissionaire,  and  pointing  you 
to  a  luxurious  arm-chair  on  the  landing  he  passes 
into  the  interior. 

While  you  are  waiting  several  persons  come  out 
through  the  door.  The  first  is  a  prominent  politician 
whom  you  know  by  sight.  He  enters  the  lift  at  once 
and  disappears,  a  little  annoyed  at  observing  that  he 
is  recognized.  The  next  is  a  young  man  with  his 
hands  thrust  into  his  pockets  in  a  manner  which 
slightly  over-emphasizes  the  rearward  of  his  an- 
atomy.    He  is  an  Oxford  undergraduate:  yes,  he  is 

40 


MR.  RUMBELOW'S  BUSINESS 

one  you  know.  What  has  he  been  doing?  Well,  he 
has  been  presenting  testimonials  from  College  Dons, 
and  explaining  certain  ambitions  of  his  to  the  Head 
of  the  Department.  He  makes  no  secret  of  it  at  all. 
He  is  glad  to  say  that  his  bet  has  been  taken.  "Noth- 
ing like  a  bet,  sir,  for  steadying  your  purpose.  It 
keeps  you  to  it.  Pve  backed  myself  for  fifty.  I  got 
the  tip  from  my  tutor."  In  due  course  he  will  be 
a  Double  First. 

Amazed  and  bewildered  by  this  revelation  you 
now  enter  the  office.  Something  in  the  atmosphere 
instantly  warns  you  to  be  on  your  guard.  You 
feel  instinctively  that  the  place  is  full  of  the 
subtlest  temptations — perhaps  a  friendly  dsemon  has 
whispered  it  in  your  ear.  "Fortunately,"  you  can 
say  to  yourself,  "I  never  bet." 

You  are  received  by  a  courteous  and  enthusiastic 
gentleman  in  gold  spectacles — the  Head  of  the  De- 
partment. 

"You  have  called  at  a  fortunate  moment,  sir,"  he 
says.  "Just  now  we  are  engaged  in  launching  a  num- 
ber of  speculations  of  unusual  interest  and  great 
public  importance,  which  I  shall  take  a  keen  pleasure 
in  explaining,  later  on,  to  a  personal  friend  of  Mr. 
Rumbelow.  But  before  we  come  to  particulars  it 
is  essential  that  you  should  grasp  the  general  prin- 
ciples on  which  our  business  is  based.  Our  business, 
sir,  has  a  philosophic  foundation;  it  is,  if  I  may  say 
so,  saturated  with  the  profoundest  methaphysics,  and 
is  conducted  by  a  mind  which  is  equal  to  their  appli- 
cation, a  combination  rarely  to  be  found.  Ideal  aims 
are  here  united  with  business-like  method,  and  the 
whole  is  directed  by  skill,  by  expert  knowledge,  by 

41 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

intellect  trained  under  the  severest  discipline  known 
to  man — and  behind  it  all  the  mind  of  Mr.  Rumbe- 
low,  which  I  verily  believe  is  one  o£  the  greatest 
minds  the  human  race  has  ever  produced." 

If  you  are  a  Christian  you  will  be  inwardly  warned 
by  the  manager's  loyalty  to  his  chief,  but  if  you  are 
a  cynic  (which  is  more  probable)  you  will  smile 
rather  dryly  at  his  exaggerations. 

"How,  I  wonder,  did  these  great  ideas  originate 
in  the  mind  of  Mr.  Rumbelow?"  you  will  ask. 

"By  revelatiofiy"  the  manager  will  reply.  "But  I 
perceive,  sir,  that  I  am  overtaxing  your  credulity  at 
the  outset.  Pardon  the  mistake.  Let  us  proceed 
at  once  to  view  the  working  of  the  Office.  And  first 
we  will  inspect  the  brain  of  the  business  in  actual 
operation — the  great  ganglion  to  which  all  the  nerves 
converge.  I  am  about  to  show  you  our  Mathematical 
Department." 

The  manager  now  conducts  you  to  the  rear  of  the 
vast  building,  far  away  from  the  noise  of  the  thor- 
oughfares in  front.  You  enter  a  spacious  and  lofty 
hall  of  fine  proportions,  rectangular  in  shape,  save 
for  the  apse  which  concludes  the  further  end.  A 
gallery  approached  by  stairs  from  below  runs  round 
the  walls,  and  thousands  of  books  of  reference,  at- 
tended by  a  staff  of  librarians,  are  ranged  on  the 
shelves  above.  On  the  floor  of  the  hall  and  on 
either  side  are  rows  of  small  compartments,  divided 
from  one  another  by  screens  of  polished  oak,  ar- 
ranged as  private  studies,  fifty  or  sixty  of  them,  each 
with  a  telephone  on  the  table.  You  can  see  the  occu- 
pants, who  are  of  both  sexes,  bending  over  their  work 
and  constantly  putting  the  telephones  to  their  ears. 

42 


MR.  RUMBELOW'S  BUSINESS 

Down  the  central  aisle  run  long  tables  to  which  girl 
messengers  bring  papers,  which  are  received  and 
filed,  or  passed  on,  after  inspection,  by  automatic 
delivery  to  one  or  other  of  the  compartments.  In 
the  apse  at  the  further  end,  on  a  dais,  sits  a  solitary 
figure  whom  no  one  approaches}  a  telephone  re- 
ceiver is  attached  to  his  right  ear,  kept  in  position  by 
a  system  of  metal  bands  which  encircle  his  great  head 
in  a  kind  of  cage.  On  the  panelled  wall  behind  him 
hangs  a  silver  bugle,  the  only  decoration,  and  the 
mascot  of  the  Firm.  The  floor  is  thickly  carpeted, 
the  workers  wear  rubber  soles,  the  silence  is  pro- 
found. The  manager  at  your  elbow  speaks  in  the 
lowest  of  whispers. 

"The  pick  of  the  mathematicians  of  Europe,"  he 
says,  indicating  the  workers  on  either  side  of  the 
room.  "Note  the  gentleman  on  the  dais  opposite. 
He  is  our  head  mathematical  expert.  His  salary  is 
five  thousand  a  year.  He  has  discovered  four  new 
kinds  of  infinite  and  can  work  equations  in  six  dimen- 
sions; mathematical  psychology  is  his  specialty,  and 
the  rapidity  of  his  calculations  is  amazing.  Note 
that  young  girl  in  the  compartment  next  but  one 
to  the  east  end.  A  perfect  marvel,  sir,  a  Pole,  a 
great  musician,  and  a  mathematical  genius.  She  is 
at  work  on  the  caprices  of  the  Woman's  Vote — one  of 
the  most  puzzling  speculations  we  have  had  to  for- 
mulate— and  has  discovered  certain  uniformities 
which,  as  we  shall  apply  them,  will  give  us  control 
of  over  a  hundred  constituencies.  Then  the  young 
man  in  the  light  suit  in  the  compartment  opposite. 
His  subject  is  the  Mathematical  Logic  of  Bad  Habits 
— a  department  from  which  we  expect  great  moral 

43 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

results.  The  Head  is  at  this  moment  correlating  his 
formulae  with  those  of  the  Polish  lady  on  the  other 
side.  Now  turn  to  the  man  in  the  third  compart- 
ment on  the  right.  He  is  a  Senior  Wrangler  and 
can  play  twenty  games  of  chess  blindfold  j  he  has  the 
fate  of  the  Coalition  Government  this  moment  in 
his  hands.  The  man  next  to  him  is  dealing  with  the 
business  of  Canon  Fairtemper,  a  small  but  interesting 
speculation.  Lower  down  observe  that  elderly 
gentleman  with  the  white  hair — one  of  the  deepest 
and  most  delicate  minds  in  the  Office.  He  is  study- 
ing the  intrigues  of  Lord  Stringpuller — you  may 
have  seen  him  leave  the  office  just  before  you  came 
in — a  disreputable  adventurer  whose  political  career 
Mr.  Rumbelow  has  determined  to  end. 

"But  the  greatest  marvel  of  all,  the  masterpiece,  is 
not  here.  It  is  in  a  small  room  beyond,  where  visitors 
are  not  permitted  to  enter.  Seven  men,  representing 
seven  great  nations,  sit  there  immersed  in  the  pro- 
foundest  investigations.  Ah,  my  dear  sir,  if  you 
could  only  see  the  development  of  those  seven  skulls, 
you  would  get  a  new  conception  of  the  mental  power 
of  the  human  race!  The  International  Problem  is  in 
their  hands.  They  are  working  out  the  Chances  of 
War  in  all  ages  and  have  already  produced  astonish- 
ing formulse,  one  of  which  I  regret  to  say  indicates 
that  we  are  on  the  eve  of  a  terrible  conflict.  You 
have  heard  our  latest  odds  on  the  European  situa- 
tion? Three  to  one  against  peace!  We  wired  the 
German  Emperor  to  that  effect  not  an  hour  ago." 

The  manager  now  proposes  that  you  should  inspect 
the  Department  of  Capital  and  Labour.  As  you 
thread  your  way  along  the  carpeted  corridors  it  occurs 

44 


MR.  RUMBELOW'S  BUSINESS 

to  you  to  ask:  "What  was  that  affair  of  Canon  Fair- 
temper's  which  you  mentioned  just  now  in  the  Hall 
of  Silence?"    The  manager  will  reply: 

"Canon  Fairtemper,  sir,  has  been  marked  out  by 
Mr.  Rumbelow  for  perferment — a  man  of  the 
loftiest  ideals  and  a  well-equipped  theologian.  He 
is  heavily  backed  j  but  the  opposition  is  also  strong. 
None  the  less  Mr.  Rumbelow  has  determined  that  he 
is  to  be  the  next  Bishop,  and  has  woven  a  most  deli- 
cate net  round  the  whole  operation — a  work  of  art  I 
assure  you,  a  small  thing  but  a  perfect  gem.  Canon 
Fairtemper  has  had  to  be  kept  in  ignorance  of  what 
was  going  forward,  having  certain  prejudices  which 
seem  to  me  not  in  keeping  with  his  general  broad- 
mindedness.  Hence  our  chief  difficulties.  But  Mr. 
Rumbelow  has  overcome  them  by  a  veritable  master- 
stroke. The  result  is  as  nearly  certain  as  any  sport- 
ing event  can  be.  It  is  one  of  the  surest  things  on 
our  books.  And  that  prompts  me  to  make  a  sugges- 
tion. If  you  should  feel  interested  in  the  matter 
and  we  could  make  it  known  that  a  man  in  your 
position  were  backing  our  favourite,  it  would  greatly 
help  us  to  steady  the  market,  which  has  been  wob- 
bling most  unreasonably  during  the  last  few  days. 
— You  don't  bet?  I'm  sorry  to  hear  it,  sir.  But 
here  we  are  at  the  Department  of  Capital  and  Labour 
and  I  must  hand  you  over  to  my  colleague,  Mr.  Hot- 
black,  our  leading  psychologist." 

You  will  find  Mr.  Hotblack,  the  psychologist, 
somewhat  quicker  than  his  predecessor  in  coming  to 
the  point.  He  is  more  brusque  in  his  manner  and 
has  an  unpleasant  way  of  looking  you  up  and  downj 
also,  of  looking  at  you  out  of  the  corner  of  his  eye. 

45 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

After  a  few  preliminary  explanations  he  will  boldly 
open  out  as  follows: 

"Our  present  odds  against  the  Social  Revolution 
occurring  in  England  during  the  next  ten  years  are 
2  to  1 .  We  can  recommend  this  speculation  as  one  of 
the  best  forms  of  insurance  against  the  confiscation 
of  private  property.  The  method  of  procedure  is 
quite  simple.  You  take  our  odds,  2  to  1,  and  back 
the  coming  of  the  Social  Revolution,  say,  for  $10,- 
000.  The  Revolution  comes  j  we  lose,  you  winj  your 
other  property  is  confiscated  by  the  revolutionaries, 
but  you  receive  from  us  $20,000  cash  down — a  use- 
ful nest-egg  for  your  old  age  and  for  your  wife  and 
children.    I  advise  you  to  do  it  at  once." 

"But  surely,"  you  exclaim,  "this  won't  help  me 
much.  The  revolutionaries  having  confiscated  my 
existing  property  would  make  short  work  of  the  $20,- 
000  I  should  receive  from  you?" 

"Oh,  would  they?"  Mr.  Hotblack  will  reply, 
breaking  into  an  unpleasant  and  long-continued  fit 
of  laughter.  "There,  my  dear  sir,  you  are  mistaken. 
You  are  evidently  not  aware  that  the  mass  of  the 
revolutionary  party,  including  all  its  prominent 
leaders  and  thousands  of  their  followers,  have  se- 
cured themselves  against  the  coming  of  the  revolu- 
tion exactly  as  I  am  now  advising  you  to  do.  They 
would  all  be  in  the  same  position  as  yourself  j  if  they 
touched  your  winnings  they  would  cut  their  own 
throats  J  believe  me  they  will  never  dare  to  do  it. 
Wherever  the  Red  Flag  waves,  sir,  our  agents  are 
hard  at  work.  In  Russia,  at  the  present  moment,  we 
are  doing  an  enormous  business — the  Chief  has  al- 
ready made  three  visits  to  the  country.    Mr.  Rumbe- 

46 


MR.  RUMBELOW'S  BUSINESS 

low,  sir,  has  the  whole  movement  in  the  hollow  of 
his  hand.  At  the  first  move  to  touch  your  winnings, 
or  those  of  anybody  else,  he  would  publish  the  list  of 
his  payments  to  the  revolutionaries,  a  list  that  would 
contain  thousands  of  names,  from  every  country  in 
Europe,  and  a  counter-revolution  would  sweep  them 
out  of  existence  in  a  day.  I  will  tell  you  one  of  the 
secrets  of  our  trade,  sir  j  for  I  observe  that  the  Chief 
wishes  you  to  have  the  fullest  information.  A 
revolutionist  is  almost  invariably  a  gambler.  We 
study  psychology  in  this  Firm,  sir." 

"Still,"  you  will  persist,  "I  don't  quite  understand. 
If  the  Social  Revolution  were  to  come,  with  your 
odds  2  to  1  against  it,  Mr.  Rumbelow  would  lose 
millions,  and  would  ensure  his  own  ruin  at  the  same 
time  as  he  insured  the  revolutionists." 

"I  am  afraid,  sir,  you  don't  understand  betting," 
Mr.  Hotblack  will  answer.  "The  odds  on  the  social 
revolution  vary  from  country  to  country,  and  there 
are  twenty-seven  countries  on  our  list.  We  treat 
each  country  exactly  as  we  should  treat  each  horse 
in  a  racing  event.  Mr.  Rumbelow  has  'made  a  book,' 
sir,  and  the  art  of  making  a  book  is  so  to  adjust  the 
odds  against  each  entry  that  whatever  happens  the 
bookmaker  is  not  only  covered  against  loss  but  stands 
to  win.  That  is  precisely  what  Mr.  Rumbelow  has 
done.  He  has  treated  the  problem  internationally. 
He  has  included  the  whole  field. 

"The  principles  on  which  we  deal  with  the  Social 
Revolution,"  he  will  continue,  "are  of  course  of  very 
wide  application  j  several  of  our  leading  Departments 
are  based  upon  them,  and  it  will  perhaps  save  you 
trouble  if  I  explain  at  once  what  they  are.     Mr. 

47 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

Rumbelow,  sir,  has  devised  a  system  of  Compensa- 
tion for  the  Evils  of  Life,  much  more  effective  and 
business-like  than  the  Compensations  provided  by 
Nature,  which  most  people  find  so  unsatisfactory — 
doubtless  you  have  read  about  them  in  Emerson. 
Our  Compensations,  sir,  are  paid  in  coin  of  the  realm, 
cash  down  at  a  stipulated  moment.  The  principle 
is  that  you  insure  compensation,  in  money,  for  any 
evil  you  may  be  afraid  of,  by  betting  upon  its  occur- 
rence within  a  given  time.  Take,  for  example,  our 
Department  of  Life  Insurance.  We  have  reduced 
Life  Insurance  to  its  simplest  elements  and  stripped  it 
of  all  circumlocution.  The  evil  you  fear,  in  this  case, 
is  death.  Death  is  the  Summary  Evil  of  Life.  Now, 
sir,  judging  from  your  healthy  appearance,  I  should 
say  at  a  guess  that  the  odds  are  5  to  1  that  you  will 
live  another  twenty  years.  Very  well.  You  back 
yourself  to  die  within  that  period — say  for  £1,000. 
If  you  die  within  that  period  your  heirs  receive  from 
us  £5,000.  If  you  survive  we  win  and  make  £1,000 
cut  of  the  transaction,  which  you  can  cover,  if  you 
like,  by  yearly  deposits,  with  us,  of  £50 — to  be  re- 
turned to  your  estate,  of  course,  along  with  the  £5,- 
000,  if  you  win  your  bet.  In  this  way  you  insure 
a  compensation  for  death,  amounting  to  £5,000,  for 
£50  a  year.  There  is  no  Insurance  Company  in  the 
world  which  can  produce  anything  comparable  to  this 
for  cheapness  and  equity. 

"Name  almost  any  evil  you  choose,  and  you  will 
find  that  Rumbelow,  Stallybrass  &  Corker  are  pre- 
pared to  take  you  on.  You  have,  let  us  suppose,  a 
pretty  daughter  who  has  many  admirers,  and  you 
are  afraid  that  she  may  end  by  marrying  a  scoundrel, 

48 


MR.  RUMBELOW'S  BUSINESS 

who  will  desert  her  and  leave  her  a  burden  on  your 
hands.  Put  the  available  data  before  us,  and  our 
Detective  Department  will  take  the  matter  up  at 
once.  In  a  few  days  their  reports  will  come  before 
me  as  Chief  Psychologist,  my  deductions  will  be 
made,  passed  on  to  the  Mathematical  Laboratory, 
and  an  hour  afterwards  the  odds  will  be  scientifically 
determined  and  telegraphed  to  you.  They  may  be  in 
your  favour  or  they  may  be  against  youj  and  you 
will  take  your  own  course  accordingly.  Let  us  sup- 
pose they  are  3  to  1  against  the  dreaded  mesalliance. 
You  then  back  the  mesalliance  for  £1,000.  Your 
worst  fears  are  realized,  your  daughter  marries  the 
scoundrel,  you  win  your  bet,  you  receive  £3,000  from 
us,  which  you  may  now  hand  over  to  your  deserted 
daughter  or  keep  for  your  own  Compensation,  as 
you  choose.  Now,  tell  me  frankly,  can  Nature  pro- 
vide you  with  any  Compensation  comparable  to  that? 
Pardon  the  illustration  j  it  is  a  particularly  good 
example  of  our  method — a  method,  sir,  which 
in  the  opinion  of  many  competent  judges  is  the 
nearest  approach  to  a  fracttcal  solution  of  the 
Problem  of  Evil  so  far  discovered  by  the  mind 
of  man. 

"In  all  this,  the  Philosophy  of  the  Firm  inclines 
somewhat,  as  no  doubt  you  have  observed,  to  the 
side  of  William  James  and  Professor  Bergson.  We 
trade  on  the  adventures  of  the  universe.  Our  raw 
material  is  the  Unexpected,  of  which  the  supply  is 
unlimited  and  immense." 

"Well,"  you  reply,  "I  am  no  great  psychologist, 
but  I  imagine  the  result  of  this  must  be  to  make  Mr. 
Rumbelow  an  object  of  equal  hatred  to  all  parties.    I 

49 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

wonder  he  is  not  assassinated.  I  suppose  he  is 
guarded  by  detectives." 

At  this  Mr.  Hotblack  the  psychologist  can  hardly 
contain  himself.  He  roars  with  laughter  and  chokes 
with  merriment. 

"Ho!  ho!  ho!"  he  cries.  "Really,  my  dear  sir,  you 
don't  understand — you  don't  understand  these  things. 
I  protest — you  don't!  Assassinated!  Guarded  by 
detectives!  Why,  sir,  Mr.  Rumbelow  is  the  most 
loved  and  trusted  man  in  the  entire  community.  He 
has  millions  of  clients — millions  among  the  working 
men,  tens  of  thousands  among  the  capitalists,  and  by 
one  and  all  he  is  wellnigh  adored.  He  is  the  living 
link  between  Capital  and  Labour.  Their  admiration 
for  his  skill  is  only  equalled  by  their  confidence  in 
his  integrity.  Between  him  and  his  clients  the  bond 
of  loyalty  is  sacred  and  reciprocal — a  loyalty  unique 
on  the  face  of  the  earth.  Since  the  days  of  his  boy- 
hood Mr.  Rumbelow's  name  has  been  a  byword  for 
all  that  is  straightforward,  honourable  and  humane. 
He  has  never  swindled  a  client  out  of  a  halfpenny, 
nor  suffered  a  client  to  swindle  a  halfpenny  out  of 
him.  There  is  a  halo  round  the  head  of  the  Chief, 
sir.  Assassinated!  Guarded  by  detectives!  Why, 
if  a  hair  of  his  head  were  injured  the  reprisals  would 
be  appalling.  In  twenty-four  hours  Smokeover 
would  be  a  heap  of  smouldering  ruins  and  calcined 
human  bones." 

This  makes  you  feel  foolish:  you  have  made  an 
absurd  faux  fas.  You  have  little  psychology  j  you 
have  less  mathematics;  you  are  not  a  betting  man; 
but  all  the  same  you  have  no  relish  for  being  thought 
an  innocent  booby.     You  are  shamefaced  and  con- 

50 


MR.  RUMBELOW'S  BUSINESS 

fused.     What  are  you  to  do?      Your  evil  genius 
suggests  an  answer. 

"Mr.  Hotblack,"  you  say,  "I  will  back  the  Social 
Revolution  for  ten  pounds." 

"Your  name,  sir?"  says  Mr.  Hotblack  quickly. 

"Tangle,"  you  reply. 

Instantly  Mr.  Hotblack  seizes  his  telephone; 
makes  connection  with  the  Hall  of  Silence,  and  cries 
into  the  instrument:  "Mr.  Tangle  backs  the  Social 
Revolution  for  ten  thousand." 

"Stop,"  you  exclaim,  "I  said  ten  -pounds.^* 

"I  distinctly  heard  ten  thousand"  says  Mr.  Hot- 
black.  "We  never  allow  a  client  to  alter  his  stakes. 
Besides,  the  figures  have  already  been  received  in  the 
Hall  of  Silence  and  passed  through  twelve  mathe- 
matical processes  while  we  are  talking." 

"It  is  infamous!"  you  cry;  "I  am  not  a  client  but 
a  visitor,  making  a  little  bet  as  a  compliment  to  the 
Firm.    I  shall  contest  it  in  a  Court  of  Law." 

"You  will  lose,"  says  Mr.  Hotblack. 

"I  shall  write  to  the  Times." 

"The  Times  will  not  put  it  in." 

"Then  I  shall  inform  Mr.  Rumbelow.  I  am  one 
of  his  oldest  friends." 

"Oh,  that  is  another  matter,"  says  Mr.  Hotblack, 
and  then,  speaking  through  the  telephone,  "Cancel 
Mr.  Tangle's  bet." 

You  rise  from  your  chair,  and  bidding  Mr.  Hot- 
black  a  frigid  good-morning  leave  the  room. 

On  your  way  out  you  call  in  at  the  office  of  your 
former  guide,  the  courteous  gentleman  in  gold  spec- 
tacles. In  tones  of  indignation  you  tell  him  what 
has  happened. 

51 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

"Mr.  Hotbkck,"  he  will  say,  "is  certainly  too 
precipitate.  But  he  is  a  devoted  servant  of  the  Firm, 
a  great  psychologist  and  a  reader  of  the  human  mind. 
I  should  not  be  surprised  to  learn,  sir,  that  your  first 
thought  was  ten  thousand,  not  ten." 

"Well,  to  tell  the  truth,"  you  will  say,  "I  did 
think  of  ten  thousand  for  a  moment.  But  then  I 
remembered  in  time  that  I  was  not  a  betting  man." 

"Ah!  I  imagined  as  much.  In  reading  the  inner 
mind  of  a  client  I  have  never  known  Mr.  Hotblack 
to  make  a  mistake.  But  now,  sir,  what  are  your  gen- 
eral impressions  of  the  Firm?" 

"That  the  whole  business  is  risky  through  and 
through.  At  every  moment  you  must  face  the  pos-- 
sibility  of  enormous  losses." 

"Unquestionably  that  danger  exists;  but  we  face 
it  with  courage  and  confidence,"  says  the  manager. 
"We  have  less  reason  to  be  nervous  than  any  busi- 
ness firm  in  the  United  Kingdom.  You  forget  that 
every  single  operation  of  the  Firm  involves  a  synop- 
tic view  of  the  whole  business  we  are  then  and  there 
transacting.  If,  for  example,  you  put  half  a  million 
on  the  maintenance  of  European  Peace — I  would  not 
advise  it,  though,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  we  have  such  a 
bet  on  our  books  at  the  present  moment — if  I  say  you 
back  Peace  for  half  a  million  and  a  boy  at  the  street 
corner  backs  a  race-horse  for  half-a-crown,  the  two 
bets  will  be  instantly  correlated  in  the  Hall  of 
Silence,  by  an  expert  in  Differential  Equations,  under 
a  formula  which  covers  the  entire  operations  of  the 
Firm.  In  addition  to  which,  sir,  I  must  beg  you 
to  believe  that  Rumbelow,  Stallybrass  &  Corker  are 
not  altogether  without  public  spirit.     We  can  face 

52 


MR.  RUMBELOW'S  BUSINESS 

losses  in  a  Great  Cause  j  but  all,  sir,  under  strict 
mathematical  regulation.  If  war  breaks  out,  as  now 
seems  inevitable — the  odds  against  peace  have  gone 
up  during  the  last  half-hour — -you  will  see  what  the 
Firm  can  do  in  a  Great  Cause.  It  will  cover  itself 
with  glory.  Mr.  Rumbelow,  sir,  will  become 
immortal.  He  will  tower  above  the  ages,  and 
the  British  nation  will  find  that  it  can  build  no 
monument  high  enough  to  do  honour  to  his 
memory." 

You  listen  bewildered}  not  to  say  repentant.  By 
your  own  confession  you  are  not  a  betting-man;  but 
the  atmosphere  of  the  place  has  hypnotized  you. 
You  are  out  of  your  depth,  and  had  better  retreat  to 
the  safe  ground  of  general  principles.     So  you  say: 

"Your  remark  about  the  synoptic  view  struck  me 
as  deeply  interesting." 

"It  is  an  interesting  point,  sir,"  says  the  manager. 
"It's  just  the  point  where  we  cut  the  knot.  I've  had 
many  conversations  with  Mr.  Rumbelow  about  it, 
and  that's  his  way  of  putting  the  matter.  As  a 
sociologist  he  attaches  great  importance  to  the  synop- 
tic point  of  view.  All  of  us  are  taught  to  think 
synoptically.  A  year's  training  in  our  office  Mr. 
Rumbelow  regards  as  the  finest  preparation  a  man 
could  have  for  public  life,  and  especially  for  high 
callings." 

But  you  have  had  enough.  You  thank  the  man- 
ager for  his  courtesy  and  take  your  farewell  with  all 
the  dignity  that  your  recent  fall  has  left  intact. 
Your  car  is  waiting  for  you  outside,  and  the  chauf- 
feur, having  smoked  all  his  cigarettes,  has  gone  to 
sleep. 

53 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

Such  was  Mr.  Rumbelow's  business  when  at  the 
height  of  its  prosperity.    Then  came  the  war. 

On  the  day  after  war  was  declared  Mr.  Rumbe- 
low  was  at  his  office  at  nine  in  the  morning.  Sum- 
moning the  twelve  Departmental  Managers  he  gave 
orders  that  pending  the  receipt  of  further  instruc- 
tions all  business  was  to  be  stopped.  Then,  accom- 
panied by  Mr.  Hotblack  the  psychologist,  the  chess- 
player, and  the  Head  Mathematical  Expert,  no 
longer  wearing  his  metal  cage,  he  entered  the  Inner 
Chamber,  where  the  seven  International  Thinkers, 
undisturbed  by  war's  alarms,  were  at  work  in  the 
silence  J  and  until  six  o'clock  in  the  evening  he  re- 
mained closeted  with  these  Mighty  Men.  Their 
deliberations  ended,  Mr.  Rumbelow  came  forth  with 
a  document,  countersigned  by  each  of  the  Mighty 
Men,  in  his  pocket  j  passed  into  the  Hall  of  Silence  j 
took  down  the  silver  bugle  from  its  peg  behind  the 
Head  Mathematician's  chair;  went  home  to  his  Castle 
and  dined  alone  with  his  beautiful  wife.  He  laid 
before  her  the  Rumbelow  scheme  for  winning  the 
war. 

Next  day  he  took  the  first  train  to  London,  and  in 
the  course  of  the  morning  interviewed  four  members 
of  the  Cabinet,  all  old  clients  of  the  Firm.  With- 
out circumlocution  he  informed  each  of  them  in 
turn  that  if  the  Government  would  give  him  the 
control  of  the  telegraphs,  the  cables  and  the  wireless 
for  three  days  he  would  stake  the  entire  assets  of 
the  Firm  on  a  victorious  issue  in  five  weeks,  laying 
the  odds  at  1,000  to  1.  "I  will  put  the  enemy  in  a 
position,"  said  Mr.  Rumbelow,  "in  which  he  cannot 
continue  the  war.     I  will  shake  the  morale  of  his 

54 


MR.  RUMBELOW'S  BUSINESS 

civilian  population.  I  will  block  his  sources  of 
supply,  I  will  undermine  his  governments,  I  will  con- 
fuse his  plans,  I  will  upset  his  finance.  I  will  create 
a  state  of  affairs  in  which  not  a  cannon  can  be 
founded,  not  a  cartridge  filled,  not  a  button  sewed 
on  a  soldier's  tunic  without  my  consent.  I  will  par- 
alyze the  enemy  in  every  nerve."  A  distinguished 
Russian  statesman,  who  accompanied  Mr.  Rumbe- 
low  at  these  interviews,  was  urgent  that  the  offer 
should  be  accepted  without  a  moment's  delay. 

What  happened  next  is  lost  in  the  impenetrable 
darkness  of  Official  Secrecy.  The  future  historian 
will  search  the  Record  Office  in  vain.  But  students 
of  the  numerous  private  memoirs  which  have  ap- 
peared since  the  war  will  observe  that  those  who 
affected  to  control  its  conduct  were  haunted  from 
first  to  last  by  the  spectre  of  Something-which-ought- 
to-have-been-done,  but  was  not  done.  Was  this  the 
Rumbelow  Plan?     The  world  will  never  know. 

That  the  Cabinet,  if  it  ever  considered  the  matter, 
had  good  reasons  for  rejecting  Mr.  Rumbelow's 
proposals  nobody  will  doubt.  Public  opinion  would 
have  been  outraged.  The  Party  Machine  would  have 
been  wrecked.  The  Ministry  would  have  been  forced 
to  resign.  Hundreds  of  Members  of  Parliament 
would  have  lost  their  seats.  Labour  would  have 
been  furious.  The  Theory  of  the  State  would  have 
been  fatally  compromised.  The  dignity  of  our  Par- 
liamentary Institutions  would  have  been  affronted. 
The  Generals  and  the  Military  Correspondents 
would  have  been  in  revolt.  The  week-end  house 
parties,  the  dinners,  the  political  luncheons,  would 
have  been  in  confusion.     There  would  have  been 

55 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

riots  in  the  West-end  Clubs,  the  wives  of  Cabinet 
Ministers  would  have  become  unmanageable  and  the 
whole  fabric  of  society  would  have  been  shaken  to 
its  foundations.  And  what  would  the  Nonconformist 
conscience  have  said?  That  Mr.  Rumbelow  had 
laid  the  odds  at  1,000  to  1  that  he  could  win  the  war 
in  five  weeks  was  not  an  argument  sufficiently  strong 
to  set  against  calamities  such  as  these. 

And  if  these  reasonings  were  not  conclusive  there 
was  something  else  5  nay,  there  were  two  things  more. 
"Have  you  ever  inspected  the  roof  of  Mr.  Rum- 
below's  great  office  in  Smokeover?"  a  friend  will  say 
to  you.  "Well,  we  have,  or  rather  a  friend  of  ours 
has,  and  we  can  tell  you  something.  The  roof  is  jiat; 
it  is  composed  of  reinforced  concrete  seven  feet  thick, 
and  there  are  gun  emplacements  at  the  four  corners. 
Our  friend  has  seen  them.  And  a  friend  of  his  who 
knows  the  engineer  who  installed  the  electric  light 
can  tell  you  as  a  'positive  fact  that  the  place  has  huge 
cellars  which  are  simply  packed  with  big  guns  and 
ammunition.  Who  is  Rmnbelow?  Answer  that  if 
you  can." 

And  here  Is  another  friend  who  will  enlighten  you 
still  more  explicitly.  "My  dear  sir,"  he  says,  lean- 
ing over  confidentially  to  your  side  of  the  first-class 
carriage,  "if  you  think  that  Rumbelow,  Stallybrass 
&  Corker  are  just  a  gang  of  mathematicians  and  chess- 
players, all  I  can  say  is — bless  your  innocence!  Rum- 
beloWy  sivy  is  a  Jew.  He  is  the  head  centre  of  a  world- 
wide Jewish  plot  against  civilization.  He  is  using 
women  as  his  decoys — his  wife  runs  that  part  of  the 
business.  Hundreds  of  women  in  Society  are  in  his 
toils.     One  of  them  told  me  at  dinner  last  night,  in 

56 


MR.  RUMBELOW'S  BUSINESS 

the  Prime  Minister's  presence,  how  she  had  dis- 
covered the  plot  in  the  nick  of  time.  Her  sister,  who 
is  married  to  a  high  official  in  the  German  telegraphs, 
had  told  her  that  for  weeks  past  thousands  of  tele- 
grams to  Rumbelow,  from  Jew  financiers,  had  been 
pouring  through  Berlin.  The  code  is  a  racing  ver- 
nacular, and  appears  to  refer  to  some  north-country 
races.  The  Kaiser  is  implicated — probably  as  a  vic- 
tim. He  wired  to  Rumbelow  three  times  just  before 
the  declaration  of  war.  The  scoundrel  could  do  all 
that  he  saidj  he  could  win  the  war  or  lose  it  at  his 
pleasure  J  but  whichever  he  did  the  downfall  of 
Christian  civilisation  would  inevitably  follow  and  the 
Jews  would  have  their  heel  on  the  neck  of  the  whole 
world.  Why  on  earth  doesn't  the  Government  act? 
All  they  need  do  is  to  send  a  couple  of  men  down  to 
Smokeover  with  orders  to  cut  through  the  wires  over 
Rumbelow's  office." 

That  Mr.  Rumbelow's  offer  was  not  accepted 
events  have  proved  j  the  rest  remains  in  obscurity. 
It  is  not  until  the  Government  informed  him  that  his 
premises  would  be  required  for  the  Ministry  of  Raw 
Materials  that  we  emerge  on  to  the  sure  ground  of 
historical  fact.  The  great  building  was  taken  over; 
and  those  members  of  the  expert  staff  who  were  unfit 
for  the  field  were  provided,  with  a  promptitude 
which  gave  rise  to  some  suspicions,  with  War  Service 
at  home. 

The  seven  Mighty  Men  were  drafted  Into  the 
Secret  Service,  with  the  exception  of  the  German,  who 
narrowly  escaped  being  shot  as  a  spy  and  was  finally 
interned.  The  Polish  genius  became  a  censor  of 
Polish    correspondence.      The    twenty-fold    chess- 

57 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

player  was  dressed  in  khaki  and  sent  to  a  leather 
factory  in  Walsall,  where  he  was  employed  in  tying 
up  straps  in  bundles  of  twelve.  The  Head  Mathe- 
matical Expert  became  Controller  of  Bacon.  In  this 
manner  the  force  of  the  Firm  was  dissipated  and  its 
operations  suspended  for  the  time  being.  Some  of  its 
more  promising  speculations  were  irretrievably 
ruined.  Canon  Fairtemper  lost  the  bishopric.  Lord 
Stringpuller  got  the  portfolio  for  which  he  had 
backed  himself,  and  assisted  in  bringing  about  several 
notable  disasters  to  the  British  arms. 

Under  the  new  regime  the  magnificent  office  of 
Rumbelow,  Stallybrass  &  Corker  soon  became  a  very 
different  place.  The  cloud  of  wires  overhead,  so 
taut  and  orderly  under  Mr.  Rumbelow's  administra- 
tion, was  adjusted  to  new  destinations j  they  sagged, 
intermingled  and  crossed  j  they  seemed  to  announce 
the  confusion  that  reigned  below.  Muddy  feet  de- 
filed the  marble  pavements,  the  patterns  faded  from 
the  Turkey  carpets,  the  polished  columns  lost  their 
lustre,  the  grates  were  filled  with  torn  paper,  ends 
of  cigarettes,  remnants  of  ham  sandwiches  and  buns. 
Where  Science  had  once  whispered  her  profoundest 
secrets  the  fat  contractor  now  chuckled  and  the  in- 
dignant manufacturer  blasphemed.  In  the  private 
room  once  occupied  by  cool  long-headed  experts, 
there  now  sat  bewildered  amateurs,  who  alternately 
tore  their  hair  and  affected  knowledge  they  did  not 
possess.  Saddest  of  all  the  transformations  was  that 
which  passed  over  the  Hall  of  Silence,  where  the 
giggling  flapper  and  the  anaemic  clerk  now  played 
at  hide-and-seek. 

Meanwhile   Mr.   Rumbelow  himself  received  a 

58 


MR.  RUMBELOW'S  BUSINESS 

commission  in  the  Guards  and  went  to  the  front. 
There  his  valour  and  ability  soon  made  themselves 
felt  J  insomuch  that  fond  enthusiasts,  innocent  of  the 
laws  of  military  promotion,  began  to  prophesy  that 
he  would  become  Commander-in-Chief  of  the 
British  Army.  But  Destiny  had  otherwise  deter- 
mined. He  had  risen  no  higher  than  the  rank  of 
Major  when  a  dangerous  wound,  received  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Delville  Wood,  ended  his  military 
career.  The  Guards  had  been  heavily  attacked,  they 
were  cut  up  and  demoralized,  when  Major  Rum- 
below,  counter-attacking  with  his  old  fury,  blew  a 
silver  bugle,  rallied  the  remnants  of  his  force,  hurled 
the  Germans  back  into  their  trenches,  and  fell  on  the 
parapet,  shot  through  the  body. 

Meanwhile  "My  Lady,"  with  a  softened  light  in 
her  beautiful  eyes  and  a  thread  or  two  of  grey  in  her 
wonderful  black  hair,  sat  on  high  in  the  Castle,  look- 
ing out  towards  the  perilous  Eastj  often  hearing  the 
low  thud  of  the  distant  artillery  borne  on  the  winds 
of  night  J  and  then  retiring  to  her  sanctuary,  where 
she  would  practise  those  strange  exercises  of  hers 
which,  later  on,  proved  so  disconcerting  to  the  theo- 
logians. 


59 


CHAPTER  THREE 

Rumbelow's  Feast 

THE  great  business  of  Rumbelow,  Stallybrass 
&  Corker  remained,  during  the  war,  in  a  State  of 
suspended  animation  j  its  stately  Office  abandoned  to 
the  incompetence  of  the  self-important  and  polluted 
by  multitudes  of  unsportsmanlike  feet — one  huge 
pandemonium  of  muddle,  bad  temper  and  mutual 
obstruction.  Meanwhile  the  Chief  himself,  pain- 
drawn  and  wasted,  was  being  wheeled  up  and  down 
the  terrace  of  his  Castle,  attended  by  his  beautiful 
wife. 

In  the  spring  of  1919,  the  particular  Ministry  of 
Confusion  then  in  possession — the  Office  had  changed 
hands  several  times  during  the  war — cleared  out,  to 
the  immense  relief  of  the  old  caretaker,  who  was  now 
in  the  Smokeover  hospital,  dying  of  a  broken  heart. 
Next  day  Mr.  Rumbelow's  car  drew  up  at  the  main 
entrance  of  the  Office,  and  the  Chief,  leaning  heavily 
on  the  arm  of  his  wife  and  walking  slowly,  entered 
the  building  and  inspected  the  abomination  of  deso- 
lation that  reigned  within. 

The  armies  of  purification  and  order  immediately 
followed  5  Mr.  Rumbelow  seemed  to  have  them  at  his 
beck  and  call  j  painters,  polishers,  scrubbers,  window- 
cleaners  innumerable  J  scaff^olds,  ladders,  buckets, 
ropes,  brushes,  soap.     Powerful   hoses  with   great 

60 


RUMBELOW'S  FEAST 

copper  nozzles  played  right  and  leftj  they  squirted 
water  by  the  ton,  it  ran  down  the  marble  stairs  in 
cataracts,  it  hit  you  in  the  face  and  drenched  you  to 
the  skin.  Every  room  was  fumigated  j  for  the  local 
bacteriologist  had  informed  Mr.  Rumbelow  "that 
the  whole  place  had  become  a  Microbe  Exchange." 
The  Turkey  carpets  were  taken  to  be  cleaned  and  dis- 
infected, in  wagons  5  behind  the  wagons  came  the 
sanitary  carts  of  the  Smokeover  Corporation,  lined 
up  in  a  row,  to  receive  the  loads  of  dust,  ashes,  torn 
paper,  broken  crockery,  empty  boxes,  half-smoked 
cigarettes,  match-tails,  mouldy  crusts,  tea-leaves, 
chicken  bones,  hair-pins,  scraps  of  red  tape,  novelettes, 
corks,  eggshells,  and  rubbish  of  every  sect  and  denom- 
ination that  poured  from  all  parts  of  the  building. 
From  basement  to  roof  the  cleansing  work  went  onj 
and  high  above  the  roof,  clinging  giddily  to  poles 
and  standards,  were  men  stretching  wires  and  beckon- 
ing to  one  another  in  mid-air.  They  were  restoring 
Mr.  Rumbelow's  lines  of  communication  with  every 
region  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 

During  the  period  of  suspended  animation  the 
great  business  was  not  altogether  at  a  standstill  j  the 
fires  were  damped  down  but  not  quite  extinguished. 
Even  in  the  darkest  days  of  the  war,  when  the  ameni- 
ties of  life  were  hardest  to  come  at,  a  sporting  gentle- 
man could,  on  making  due  inquiries,  find  the  means 
of  lodging  a  judicious  bet  with  Mr.  Rumbelow. 
Several  pirate  concerns  were  started,  and  thousands 
of  letters  were  sent  through  the  post  bearing  the 
forged  signature  of  the  Firm.  There  was,  so  they 
say,  a  small  shop  pretending  to  sell  coffee  and  buns, 
not  far  from  Victoria  Station,  where  officers  and  men 

61 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

proceeding  to  the  front  could  take  the  odds  on  their 
chances  of  coming  back  alive  j  and  a  yet  more  secret 
place,  the  drawing-room  of  a  fashionable  flat  in 
Mayfair,  where  ladies  of  uncertain  reputation  betted 
on  the  lives  of  their  "men."  Both  these  concerns 
broke  their  banks  and  vanished  j  which  is  sufficient 
proof  that  Mr.  Rumbelow  had  nothing  to  do  with 
them.  Mr.  Rumbelow  never  broke  his  bank,  and, 
though  he  vanished  at  the  last,  it  was  like  Elijah  in 
a  chariot  of  fire. 

All  this  time  Mr.  Rumbelow  kept  in  touch  with  his 
misused  experts  and  knew  where  every  one  of  them 
was  to  be  found.  Every  Christmas  during  the  war  he 
sent  them  cards,  exquisitely  drawn  and  painted  by 
his  wife,  on  which  the  motto  was  inscribed,  "Watch 
and  be  ready.  Let  your  lamps  be  burning  and  your 
loins  girded  up."  And  each  expert,  as  he  looked 
upon  the  words,  would  heave  a  sigh  of  longing  for 
the  day  when  his  Master  would  return. 

And  now  it  was  coming  to  pass.  The  news  spread 
that  the  great  factory  that  made  no  smoke,  but  did 
more  business  than  any,  aye,  even  than  Hooker  &  Co., 
the  mighty  profiteers  with  the  seven  belching  chim- 
neys, was  about  to  rekindle  its  fires.  And  a  thrill  of 
expectation  ran  around  the  world.  But  all  were  not 
pleased. 

Often  and  often  had  the  question  been  asked,  even 
in  the  days  before  the  war,  why  the  arm  of  the  law 
was  not  upraised  against  the  malign  operations  of 
Rumbelow,  Stallybrass  &  Corker.  Most  people  knew 
the  reason.    Some  never  will. 

Why,  for  example,  did  the  police  refrain  from  in- 
terference?     Because  the  policemen,  including  the 

62 


RiJMBELOW'S  FEAST 

Chief  Constable,  were  clients  of  Mr.  Rumbelow  in 
one  or  other  of  his  numerous  Departments.  Why 
were  the  magistrates  slow  to  act?  For  the  same  rea- 
son. Why  was  it  useless  to  put  detectives  to  watch 
the  doors?  Because  the  detectives  all  went  inside. 
Why  did  Members  of  Parliament  take  no  notice  of 
the  appeals  of  their  constituents  to  bring  up  the 
matter  in  the  House?  Because  the  said  Members, 
with  an  eye  to  the  coming  Election,  had  insured 
themselves  against  the  treachery  of  the  said  consti- 
tuents by  Mr.  Rumbelow's  arts.  Why  did  great 
newspapers  refuse  to  take  the  matter  up?  Because 
Mr.  Rumbelow's  odds  were  the  best  index  they  had 
to  the  way  the  wind  was  blowing.  Why  was  the 
Church  apathetic?    Heaven  only  knows. 

But  now  that  this  shop  of  iniquity  was  about  to  re- 
open, now  that  this  gin-trap  of  Beelzebub  was  again 
set  in  the  public  highway,  it  was  clear  that  somebody 
must  do  something.  And  who  or  what  more  fitted 
to  do  something  than  the  Smokeover  Branch  of  the 
Society  for  Ethical  Culture?  The  Branch  resolved 
to  rouse  public  opinion  by  a  whirlwind  campaign. 

The  first  step  was  to  enlist  Professor  Pawkins'  in- 
comparable powers  of  moral  invective.  Professor 
Pawkins,  who  held  the  Chair  of  Moral  Science  in 
the  local  university,  had  recently  become  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  Society,  under  circumstances  to  be  de- 
scribed hereafter.  The  Professor  disliked  public 
action,  believing  that  the  slow  percolation  of  the 
ideal  was  the  true  method  of  reform,  but  was  at 
length  induced  to  draw  up  a  Manifesto,  which  was 
duly  exhibited  on  the  hoardings  of  Smokeover,  with 
a  whisky  advertisement  on  one  side  and  a  stabbing 

63 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

scene  from  the  cinema  on  the  other.  In  this  Mani- 
festo Professor  Pawkins,  with  an  eloquence  too  fervid 
to  concern  itself  with  the  niceties  of  metaphor,  called 
upon  Smokeover  "to  rise  in  mass  to  attack  the  open 
sore  in  its  midst,  which  was  swallowing  up  the  gains 
of  industry,  upsetting  economic  relations,  spreading 
ruin  broadcast  and  undermining  house  and  home." 
It  was  further  announced  that  a  Public  Meeting 
would  be  held  in  the  City  Hall  on  such  a  date,  and 
that  a  Monster  Petition  to  both  Houses  of  Parlia- 
ment would  await  signatures. 

The  Public  Meeting  took  place.  All  the  members 
of  the  Society  were  present,  many  of  them  on  the 
platform.  In  addition  there  were  about  thirty  or 
forty  tramps  of  both  sexes,  who  were  just  then  enjoy- 
ing the  hospitality  of  Smokeover,  attracted  to  the 
meeting  by  the  warmth  of  the  City  Hall;  for  the 
night  was  cold,  and  so  was  the  workhouse.  They 
seated  themselves  as  near  as  possible  to  the  heating 
apparatus,  where  they  went  to  sleep  and  distributed 
fleas  among  the  more  respectable  portion  of  the  audi- 
ence. And  there  was  one  other,  to  whom  the  police- 
man touched  his  hat  as  he  passed  through  the  door, 
an  honour  which  he  had  not  bestowed  on  anybody 
else.  This  person  entered  just  after  the  meeting  had 
begun  and  sat  down  at  the  further  end  of  the  Hall, 
in  the  shadows  under  the  gallery. 

There  were  seven  speakers,  domestic  and  im- 
ported; and  the  proceedings  lasted  two  hours.  When 
all  was  over,  the  thunders  of  the  captains  and  the 
shoutings,  the  resolutions  and  the  votes  of  thanks, 
and  the  policeman  had  hustled  the  last  tramp  out  of 
the  Hall,  the  Chairman  sent  for  the  Monster  Peti- 

64 


RUMBELOW'S  FEAST 

tion,  which  had  been  lying  in  the  vestibule,  that  the 
signatures  might  be  counted  and  the  extent  of  the 
victory  ascertained.  The  name  that  stood  at  the  head 
was  Arthur  Rumbelow,  and  below  that  the  police- 
man's.   There  were  no  others. 

The  Whirlwind  Campaign  was  well  launched  and 
ably  supported  J  it  passed  from  city  to  city,  and  gave 
occasion  for  many  eloquent  speeches.  But  to  rouse 
the  great  British  public  to  the  point  of  taking  moral 
action  is  never  an  easy  thing.  And  it  so  happened 
that  at  this  time  nine  other  Whirlwind  Campaigns 
were  sweeping  the  country  against  nine  different 
"open  sores"  on  the  body  public.  The  organizers 
of  the  nine  condemned  the  Anti-Rumbelow  cam- 
paign as  a  nuisance,  which  indeed  was  their  normal 
attitude  towards  each  other  j  it  got  in  their  way, 
clashed  with  their  meetings,  took  up  the  space  in  the 
newspapers  that  was  due  to  them  and,  as  they  said, 
generally  "queered  their  pitch."  With  ten  Whirl- 
wind Campaigns  going  on  simultaneously  about  ten 
"open  sores"  produced  by  ten  different  social  diseases, 
the  public  naturally  became,  first,  confused,  then 
bored,  then  contemptuous,  and  finally  cynical.  While 
Smokeover  was  attacking  Mr.  Rumbelow,  Glasgow 
would  be  attacking  Whisky,  Manchester  would  be 
attacking  Protection,  Birmingham  would  be  attack- 
ing Free  Trade,  London  would  be  attacking  the 
Rates,  South  Wales  would  be  attacking  Capital,  Ire- 
land would  be  attacking  the  Union,  the  Opposition 
would  be  attacking  the  Government,  and  the  Garden 
Cities  would  be  outroaring  the  carnivora  for  a  Vege- 
table Diet.  For  three  days  the  public  would  attack 
the  first  "open  sore"  presented  to  them,  no  matter 

65 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

which;  then,  with  slightly  diminished  vigour,  they 
would  go  on  to  the  next ;  and  so  on  till  they  came  to 
the  last,  when  the  Great  Divorce  Case  or  the  Great 
Fight  or  the  arrival  of  Mr.  Charlie  Chaplin  would 
furnish  a  timely  diversion,  and  the  whole  lot  would 
be  forgotten.  Meanwhile  the  Representatives  of  the 
People  would  watch  the  game  from  their  Olympian 
seats,  and,  leaving  the  ten  Whirlwind  Campaigns  to 
blow  each  other  to  a  standstill,  would  pursue  their 
accustomed  way,  and  quit  London  as  usual  on  Satur- 
days, some  to  ponder  their  intolerable  burdens,  some 
to  pray  for  divine  guidance,  and  some  to  spend  de- 
lightful week-ends  at  country  houses,  playing  golf, 
tennis,  bridge,  hide-and-seek  and  catch-as-catch-can. 
Needless  to  say  the  assault  on  Mr.  Rumbelow  came 
to  nothing,  though  Professor  Pawkins  expressed  him- 
self well  satisfied  with  the  launching  of  the  Ideal, 
which,  he  said,  would  slowly  percolate  into  the  com- 
mon, or  universal,  mindj  and  he  quoted  the  lines  of 
Emerson: 

"One  accent  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
The  heedless  world  has  never  lost." 

As  to  the  Monster  Petition,  the  presence  of  Mr. 
Rumbelow's  signature  at  the  head  of  a  document 
calling  for  his  own  suppression  was  open  to  various 
constructions  and  had  the  effect  of  preventing  other 
people  from  signing.  What  was  the  Society  to  do? 
It  was  a  nice  point  in  morality.  Was  Mr.  Rum- 
below's signature  given  in  good  faith?  Some  said 
"yes,"  others  "no."  Was  the  policeman's  in  order? 
Should  he  be  reported  to  the  Chief  Constable?  Some 
said  "yes,"  others  "no."    Finally,  after  long  discus- 

66 


RUMBELOW'S  FEAST 

sion,  it  was  decided  by  a  small  majority  of  votes 
that  the  signatures  were  not  ex  animoy  and  therefore 
insignificant,  except  as  ink.  Both  were  accordingly 
obliterated  by  a  patent  process  which  left  no  mark 
on  the  paper.  After  that  signatures  were  more  easily 
obtainable,  though  not  many,  and  in  due  course  the 
document  reached  its  destination  and  was  brought 
under  the  notice  of  the  Prime  Minister,  nine  others 
arriving  on  the  same  day.  The  Prime  Minister  was 
just  then  packing  his  trunks  and  his  papers  for  Paris, 
where,  along  with  three  other  gentlemen,  he  was 
about  to  decide  the  fate  of  a  few  hundred  million 
human  beings  j  and  being  in  a  tremendous  whirlwind 
of  his  own,  of  which  the  public  knew  nothing  and 
which  was  carrying  him  Heaven  knows  whither,  he 
paid  no  more  attention  to  the  minor  whirlwinds  than 
he  would  to  a  fly  which  had  settled  on  his  nose. 

In  the  meantime,  Mr.  Rumbelow,  undisturbed  by 
these  excursions  and  alarms,  had  been  rapidly  push- 
ing forward  his  sinister  preparations  for  the  reopen- 
ing of  his  office.  There  was  no  advertisement,  no 
display,  no  announcement  in  the  press  j  these  adven- 
titious aids  to  success  Mr.  Rumbelow  needed  notj 
but  it  was  to  be  a  great  event,  and  to  be  celebrated 
in  a  manner  worthy  of  a  reunion  so  happy.  To  each 
of  his  jubilant  experts  he  sent  a  beautifully  illumi- 
nated card,  the  work  of  the  same  delicate  hand  as 
before,  inviting  him  to  a  banquet  to  be  held  in  the 
Hall  of  Silence  on  such  a  night.  And  not  to  the  ex- 
perts alone.  To  every  soul  connected  with  the  vast 
establishment  a  like  invitation  was  sentj  to  the  Heads 
of  the  twelve  Departments,  to  the  sub-managers,  to 
the  cashiers,  to  the  telephone  clerks,  to  the  book- 

67 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

keepers,  to  the  telegraphists,  to  the  women  typists, 
to  the  shorthand  writers,  to  the  girl  messengers,  to 
the  tall  commissionaires,  to  the  watchmen,  to  the 
caretakers  and  to  the  very  charwomen  who  scrubbed 
the  office  floors.  All  received  the  same  joyous  greet- 
ing j  all  were  summoned  in  the  same  loving  and 
gracious  terms  to  join  in  celebrating  the  Master's 
return.  For  the  wounded  still  in  hospitals,  for  the 
mutilated  and  crippled  men  in  their  homes,  the  care 
was  individual  and  minute.  It  was  evident  that  My 
Lady  knew  the  name  and  condition  of  every  one. 
Mr.  Rumbelow's  motors,  of  which  he  had  seven, 
were  to  penetrate  the  suburbs  and  to  wait  at  the 
hospital  doors:  an  invalid  carriage  would  bring  the 
boy  who  had  been  shot  through  the  back  and  was 
paralyzed  for  lifej  guides  would  be  sent  for  the 
blind  J  an  attendant  would  feed  the  man  who  had 
no  hands  J  a  trained  nurse  would  accompany  the 
devoted  old  caretaker  who  was  dying  of  a  broken 
heart.  Is  the  old  mother  wistful  of  a  gleam  of  joy 
before  the  everlasting  silence  falls?  Bring  her,  in 
God's  name!  Is  there  a  fair  enchantress?  Is  there 
a  winsome  daughter  whose  face  you  would  have  us 
see?  Let  the  bright  lassie  comej  for  whom  you  love 
do  we  not  love  also?  Are  there  children  you  cannot 
leave?  We  are  ready  for  them.  Our  good  Mr. 
Hotblack  has  turned  his  office  into  a  Palace  of  De- 
lights, and  he  himself  will  be  there,  the  Great  Magi- 
cian, with  live  rabbits  and  fiery  serpents  in  the  crown 
of  his  hat,  which  will  chase  you  round  the  room 
and  turn  into  boxes  of  chocolate  under  your  very 
nose.  Does  any  need  a  smart  suit  of  clothes  for  the 
festival?     Let  him  go  to  the  tailors  and  mention  Mr. 

68 


RUMBELOW'S  FEAST 

Rumbelow's  name.  Or  a  pretty  frock?  Let  her  go 
to  the  dressmaker  and  say  My  Lady  has  sent  her. 
"Did  she  wish  adornments — a  chain  round  her  neck, 
roses  in  her  hair,  shoes  with  bright  buckles  on  her 
feet?"  "Get  them  where  and  as  you  willj  get  them 
in  plenty  and  say:  '  'Tis  My  Lady's  wish.'  Let  your 
garments  be  shining,  and  your  colours  fair.  For  our 
beloved  Master  is  safe  and  sound."  Thus  she  wrote, 
in  her  own  hand,  to  every  one,  according  to  the 
minute  particulars  of  each. 

But  not  for  merriment  alone  was  the  feast  being 
prepared.  The  Master  had  made  it  known  that  he 
would  speak  to  his  loyal  followers,  that  he  would  tell 
them  the  History  of  the  Firm  and  something  of  his 
own  life,  and  then,  having  gathered  the  past  together 
and  looked  to  the  rock  from  which  they  were  hewn 
and  the  hole  of  the  pit  whence  they  were  digged, 
would  plunge  into  the  future  and  unfold  a  vision  of 
the  glories  awaiting  them.  Then  a  health  would  be 
drunk  and  the  trumpet  would  sound. 

Never  was  a  banquet  more  nobly  decked}  majesty 
and  loveliness  were  the  keynote  of  it.  The  Master's 
conservatories  had  been  ransacked,  his  orchid-houses 
had  been  stripped,  his  beds  of  violets  and  lilies  had 
been  swept  as  with  a  mower's  scythe,  to  furnish  the 
flowers:  there  was  not  one  too  many  and  not  one  too 
few.  Along  the  tables,  covered  with  the  whitest 
of  napery,  lay  fluctuating  rivulets  of  scarlet  leaves, 
tendrils  gathered  from  a  precious  tree,  which  broke 
into  graceful  curves  round  the  space  allotted  to  every 
guest.  Down  the  middle  ran  the  flowers,  not 
huddled  together,  as  the  manner  is  with  some,  but 
freely  spreading  on  long  stems  and  seeming  to  fall 

69 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

towards  the  beholder  and  beckon  him;  they  were  of 
every  hue  and  their  odours  filled  the  air.  There 
were  three  hundred  guests  and  each  had  his  own  par- 
ticular flower,  different  in  race  or  in  colour  from  all 
the  rest  3  no  two  were  alike.  There  was  a  white  rose 
for  the  Head  Mathematical  Expert  j  there  was  a 
fiery  cactus  for  Mr.  Hotblack.  The  charwoman 
found  before  her  a  rare  orchid  from  Brazil,  a  marvel 
of  colour,  having  the  wings  of  an  angel  white  and 
gold,  which  flower  was  by  her  most  tenderly  carried 
home  and  kept  alive  in  the  neck  of  a  bottle  for 
three  weeks  to  the  delight  and  wonder  of  the  street. 
All  knew  the  hand  that  had  done  these  things. 

At  either  end  was  a  raised  platform  and  a  high 
table  dressed  thereon.  At  the  one  sat  the  Master 
with  the  Twelve  Heads  on  either  side  of  him;  and, 
lest  the  curse  of  thirteen  should  alight,  there  was 
place  reserved  for  another.  Wonder  at  this,  O  ye 
curious,  for  wonder  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom! 
Our  present  discords  shall  make  the  sweeter  music 
ere  the  feast  is  done. 

At  the  other  table  sat  the  Seven  Mighty  Men, 
Masters  of  Adventure,  Lords  of  Contingency,  Privy 
Councillors  of  the  Unforeseen,  each  beneath  the  flag 
of  his  nation — the  British,  the  American,  the  French, 
the  Italian,  the  Russian,  the  Japanese;  aye,  and  the 
German  too,  black,  white  and  red.  It  faced  the  Mas- 
ter, his  soldier's  harness  on  his  back  and  his  wound 
still  aching;  he  looked  upon  the  flag  without  abhor- 
rence, honouring  the  high  gifts  over  which  it  waved, 
as  a  soldier  should;  nor  was  there  one  in  that  com- 
pany, mutilated  or  whole,  who  would  have  ques- 
tioned the  fitness  of  these  things.    For  this  also  was 

70 


RUMBELOW'S  FEAST 

My  Lady's  doing,  and  the  seal  of  beauty  was  on  all 
her  works. 

On  a  stage  below  were  the  workers  in  the  Hall  of 
Silence,  the  Head  Mathematical  Expert  in  their 
midst,  each  with  his  high  gift  burning  bright  and 
shining  upon  his  neighbour.  Here  was  far-sighted 
Calculation  with  long  head  and  steady  eye.  Here 
was  the  careful  face  of  old  Experience.  Here  was 
the  Beauty  of  Competence,  lithe-handed  and  alert. 
Here  was  a  youth  stalwart  and  dexterous;  there  a 
girl,  like  one  of  the  living  creatures  in  EzekiePs 
vision,  all  fire,  light,  colour,  loveliness  and  velocity. 

The  mutilated  men  sat  apart.  Among  them  My 
Lady  had  gathered  her  choicest  flowers  and  there  was 
a  hundred  pounds  in  money  under  the  plate  of  every 
one. 

And  now  the  feast  has  begun  and  the  company  is 
in  full  cry.  Many  are  the  strains  of  joy  and  merri- 
ment; many  the  vicissitudes  of  repartee;  now  vary- 
ing with  occasion,  now  prompted  by  personality;  but 
through  them  all  love  for  the  Master  is  the  funda- 
mental note,  softening  all  voices,  purifying  all 
laughter,  ennobling  all  wit.  Good  it  is  to  see  the 
grave  faces  of  the  Seven  Mighty  Men,  transfigured 
and  radiant;  or  the  Head  Mathematical  Expert,  un- 
burdened by  the  cares  of  thought,  his  wit  sparkling 
like  a  diamond;  or  the  blithe  spirits  of  the  Polish 
Genius  glancing  darkly  under  her  braided  brows; 
or  the  comely  frocks  of  the  young  girls  and  the  lights 
of  love  and  joy  dancing  in  their  bright  eyes.  Good 
also  to  hear  the  roars  of  laughter  from  the  Twelve 
Heads,  under  the  leadership  of  Mr.  Hotblack,  as  the 
Master  tells  them  the  story  of  the  Monster  Petition. 

71 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

Better  still  to  enter  the  shadows  under  the  gallery 
and  watch  My  Lady  waiting  upon  the  mutilated  men, 
or  bending  over  the  paralyzed  boy  and  promising  she 
will  teach  him  to  paint.  And  best  of  all  to  visit  the 
old  caretaker,  who  has  hardly  turned  his  gaze  from 
the  Master  since  they  brought  him  forward  in  his 
wheeled  chair,  and  to  hear  him  say,  in  tones  which 
touch  the  heart  and  come  from  it,  "Lord,  now  lettest 
thou  Thy  servant  depart  in  peace,  for  mine  eyes  have 
seen  Thy  salvation." 

The  feast  is  ended  j  the  Master  has  risen  in  his 
place  j  all  voices  are  hushed.  Clear,  vibrant  and 
solemn  are  his  words: 

"Let  us  reverence  the  dead!" 

There  is  a  rustle  of  rising  figures j  a  clatter  of 
crutches  suddenly  seized  and  planted  on  the  floor; 
the  men  in  wheeled  chairs  cover  their  faces  j  the 
paralyzed  boy  closes  his  eyes;  My  Lady,  dressed  in 
shining  white,  kneels  by  his  side.  Then  Silence,  save 
for  a  low  and  continuous  humming  in  the  cloud  of 
telegraph  wires  overhead,  which  all  hear,  and  each 
interprets  as  he  will.  Suddenly  the  tension  is  re- 
lieved. A  soft  note,  hardly  to  be  distinguished  from 
the  humming  overhead,  but  gradually  increasing  till 
it  becomes  a  clarion  call,  breaks  out  from  some  hidden 
place.  It  is  the  Silver  Bugle  blowing  triumphant 
music. 

The  last  echoes  die  away;  all  are  expectant  and 
silent;  the  First  Toast  is  coming  and  it  is  My  Lady 
who  will  speak. 

She  has  taken  the  vacant  place  by  the  Master's 
side,  and  stands  there,  clothed  in  radiance:  her  girdle 
a  flaming  scarlet,  her  hair  black  as  the  tents  of  Kedar, 

72 


RUMBELOW'S  FEAST 

a  single  diamond  blazing  like  a  star  above  her 
brows — a  woman  sent  from  God. 

"In  all  ages,"  she  cries,  "men  have  poured  out  liba- 
tions to  the  Invisible,  wine  and  oil  and  precious  oint- 
ments and  blood.  The  powers  of  the  Invisible  are 
with  us  to-night.  They  are  riding  on  the  wings  of 
the  wind  that  blows  over  this  city.  We  can  hear 
their  still  small  voices  calling  to  us  from  above  in  the 
humming  of  the  wires.  To  them  I  raise  my  glass. 
I  drink  to  the  city  that  hath  foundations.  I  drink 
to  the  Communion  of  Saints — the  dead,  the  living, 
the  unborn.  I  drink  to  the  Church  Militant  and  to 
the  Church  Triumphant.  I  drink  to  the  New  Jeru- 
salem coming  down  from  heaven  like  a  bride  made 
ready  for  her  husband.  I  drink  to  the  universal 
brotherhood  of  man." 

All  bow  the  head.  In  the  solemn  hush  that  fol- 
lows the  night  wind  gathers  force  and  the  humming 
of  the  wires  grows  louder  and  more  musical.  'Tis 
the  only  reply.  All  hear  it,  and  each  interprets  as 
he  will. 

Next  comes  the  Motto  of  the  Firm,  and  who  but 
the  Master  can  speak  to  this?  The  words  of  it  were 
his  own;  the  spear-head  of  his  purpose,  the  arrow 
of  his  desire,  the  winged  messenger  of  his  imagina- 
tion— his  call,  his  slogan,  his  battle  cry,  and  the  pre- 
lude to  his  mighty  deeds.    This  was  the  Motto: 

"Ideal  Aims,  Businesslike  Methods,  Sportsman- 
like Principles" 

He  spoke  of  the  beginning,  of  the  middle  and  of 
the  end:  of  the  birth  of  the  Firm  on  a  dunghill j  of 
the  foul  juices  that  fed  its  roots j  of  their  translation 

73 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

into  life  and  growth  and  power  j  of  the  metabolism 
of  the  spirit  J  of  the  spreading  of  the  tree  till  its  roots 
were  beside  all  waters  and  its  branches  covered  the 
earth  J  of  the  hour  coming  swiftly,  when  the  Firm, 
like  the  tardy  cactus  which  blossoms  after  a  hundred 
years  and  is  all  thorns  and  ugliness  till  then,  would 
cover  itself  with  lordly  flowers  and  astonish  the 
desert  places  with  beauty. 

He  spoke  of  the  kingdoms  of  this  world,  and  of 
their  perishable  foundations  j  and  then  of  the  deeper 
foundations  of  the  Firm,  of  the  indefeasible  loyalty 
of  its  members  to  one  another,  of  their  union  in  the 
sportsmanlike  spirit,  of  their  co-operation  in  the 
businesslike  method,  of  their  solidarity  in  the  ideal 
aim. 

He  spoke  of  revolutions:  how  they  revert  to  the 
type  of  that  which  they  destroy  and  so  destroy  them- 
selves} how  the  Firm  had  no  part  in  these  vicious 
circles,  having  its  eyes  set  upon  a  city  with  founda- 
tions, of  which  the  pattern  had  been  shown  it  in  the 
Mount. 

"Great  Companions,"  he  cried,  raising  his  hand 
towards  the  Seven  Mighty  Men,  "I  summon  you 
to  a  new  enterprise — perhaps  the  last.  Concentrate 
your  sciences!  Organize  your  high  thoughts!  Ex- 
plore the  hidden  ways!  Meditate  on  the  mighty 
works  of  the  past,  on  the  triumphs  you  have  won 
against  tremendous  odds,  on  the  deeds  deemed  im- 
possible that  you  have  done,  on  the  mountains  you 
have  overturned  by  the  roots,  on  the  sufferings  you 
have  embraced  as  your  right  and  transmuted  into 
joy.  It  shall  be  so  again.  But  not  scatheless  shall 
we  emerge.    Death  and  suffering  must  mingle  with 

74 


RUMBELOW'S  FEAST 

the  game.  But  what  then?  Think  of  the  heroic 
dead  whose  presence  has  been  with  us  to-night.  What 
matters  the  worst  if  we  meet  it  as  sportsmen  should?" 

Then  he  would  have  spoken  of  My  Lady,  and  of 
her  excellence  among  women — the  guardian  angel 
of  the  Firm.  But  he  was  overtaken  by  a  storm.  At 
the  sound  of  her  name  a  divine  madness  rushed  upon 
the  assembly  like  a  mighty  wind.  The  multitude 
sprang  to  its  feet,  wild  with  joyj  some  shouted,  some 
sang,  some  danced,  some  laughed,  some  babbled  5  the 
mutilated  men  banged  their  crutches  on  the  floor 
till  they  were  weary j  the  paralyzed  boy  half  raised 
himself;  the  Seven  Mighty  Men  cried  Ha!  Ha! 
and  to  end  all  the  player  of  the  Silver  Bugle  stepped 
forth  from  the  shadows  and  blew  his  gayest  music. 

What  a  merrymaking  then  followed!  The  spirit 
of  Joy,  which  builds  the  soul  into  a  house  of  many 
mansions  and  makes  sweet  music  in  every  one,  held 
sway  over  the  company  like  a  good  priest  over  his 
flock,  and  claimed  the  humblest  guest  as  a  communi- 
cant. Dance  on,  ye  happy  souls,  in  the  shining 
meadows  of  your  dreams! 

The  revels  are  ended  and  the  guests  bestir  them- 
selves to  depart.  By  the  door  stands  My  Ladyj  be- 
hind her  is  a  bank  of  greenery,  dark  myrtles  and 
bright  ferns.  The  last  to  pass  out  is  the  old  care- 
taker, in  his  chair,  wheeled  by  the  nurse.  My  Lady 
looks  in  his  face,  bends  over  him,  takes  a  red  rose 
from  her  girdle  and  places  it  in  his  hand;  and  her 
voice  as  she  bids  him  farewell  trembles  with  love. 
The  old  man  answers  not  a  word  but  reverently  kisses 
her  hand.  Then  the  nurse  fares  forward  with  her 
charge  into  the  lighted  streets. 

75 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

The  streets  are  crowded  j  multitudes  are  pouring 
out  from  the  theatre,  the  cinema,  the  public-house; 
the  boys  are  crying  the  evening  papers;  the  night 
walkers  are  plying  their  trade;  the  sons  of  Belial  are 
abroad.  Great  buses  charge  along  the  highway; 
motors  flash  hither  and  thither,  emitting  their  fumes 
and  sounding  their  horns.  The  good  nurse,  piloting 
her  little  carriage,  must  needs  walk  warily,  now  push- 
ing it  along  the  pavement,  now,  when  the  press  is 
thicker,  in  the  perilous  highway;  and  with  quick  eyes- 
right  and  left  at  the  crossing  of  the  streets.  But  the 
night  is  clear  and  the  stars  are  bright. 

And  now  they  reach  the  hospital,  all  dangers 
passed.  The  nurse,  leaving  her  station  behind  the 
chair,  steps  forward  to  ring  the  bell,  for  it  is  late. 
That  done,  she  turns  round  to  look  at  her  charge  and 
to  speak  of  their  happy  arrival.  The  old  man  is 
dead;  his  white  hands  are  on  the  coverlet,  one  with 
the  fingers  extended,  the  other  tightly  grasping  My 
Lady's  rose. 

Here  the  Legend  of  Rumbelow  the  Betting  Man 
came  to  a  close.  A  t  first  the  Voice  had  sfoken  clearly , 
rising  at  certain  foints  into  tones  so  loud  and  ringing 
that  all  Smokeovery  had  it  been  awake,  would  have 
heard.  But  the  time  was  the  dead  of  night.  Smoke- 
over  was  in  a  deef  sleep,  and  save  for  the  Author y 
the  Bridge  was  deserted. 

At  the  last,  when  telling  of  the  old  caretaker's 
d.eath,  the  Voice  had  sunk  into  a  low  and  solemn 
whisper,  almost  inaudible,  and  the  Author  had  m-uch 
ado  to  hear  what  was  said.  Moreover  there  was  con- 
fusion of  sounds,     hong  before  the  end  came,  the 

16 


RUMBELOW'S  FEAST 

Author  had  been  aware  that  several  Voices  were  striv- 
ing to  make  themselves  heard.  He  -perceived  that 
more  Legends  than  one  had  cotne  to  the  Bridge^  all 
connected  together  and  all  eager  to  speak.  Once^ 
when  the  Voice  mentioned  the  name  of  Hooker ^  the 
great  profiteer,  another  narrative  began  to  m,ingle 
With  the  -first y  so  that  the  Author  had  difficulty  in 
keeping  the  two  disentangled.  This  Voice  was  the 
m^ost  intrusive  of  all  that  were  striving  to  speaky  and 
it  may  be  that  the  Author y  in  spite  of  his  care  to  keep 
the  two  distincty  has  introduced  into  the  first  Legend 
certain  matter  which  belongs  to  the  second.  At  all 
events  the  old  caretaker  had  hardly  breathed  his  last 
when  the  Second  Voice  took  up  its  parable.  It  an- 
nounced the  Legend  of  the  Mad  Millionaire. 


77 


PART  TWO 

The  Legend  of  the  Mad  Millionaire 


CHAPTER  ONE 

Smokeover  Grows  Rich 

nPHE  great  city  of  Smokeover,  judged  by  the 
■^   smoky  standard,  did  well  out  of  the  war.     But 
beyond  the  canopy  of  smoke,  now  denser  than  ever, 
the  stars  shone  down  with  an  angry  light. 

Both  extremes  of  the  community  pillaged  the  State 
to  their  hearts'  content.  They  had  their  excuse;  they 
could  hardly  help  it;  for  the  State  encouraged  the 
pillage.  The  loot  was  enormous,  grotesque,  suffo- 
cating. The  wages  of  the  workers  went  up  by  leaps 
and  bounds;  they  stared  at  them  in  amazement;  they 
were  drunk  with  money;  they  struck  for  more;  and 
their  spending  was  as  foolish  as  their  earning  was 
immense.  A  riveter's  wife  would  pay  £70  for  a  seal- 
skin coat — a  bad  one;  a  moulder  would  buy  a  piano 
which  he  could  not  get  into  his  house  and  had  to  keep 
in  the  back  yard;  a  boy  would  light  his  cigarette  with 
a  ten-shilling  Treasury  Bill;  the  child  of  a  puddler 
would  be  sent  to  school  in  a  pair  of  gold  spectacles, 
to  be  broken  immediately  and  replaced  by  another 
next  day;  the  miners  had  their  private  cars;  the 
jewellers'  shops  were  packed  on  Saturday  nights  with 
working  girls.  Nobody  paused  to  think  that  in  a 
year  or  two  all  these  things  would  assuredly  find  their 
way  to  the  pawnbrokers.  The  day  of  the  workers 
had  come  and  they  were  making  the  most  of  it. 

81 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

Nor  were  their  lords  and  masters  behind  them. 
The  same  post  that  brought  a  man  news  at  his  private 
house  that  his  only  son  had  been  blown  to  bits,  or 
drowned  in  a  submarine,  would  deliver,  at  his  office, 
cheques  from  the  Government  to  the  tune  of  a  hun- 
dred thousand.  He,  no  less  than  his  employees,  was 
at  a  loss  what  to  do  with  his  money.  To  whom  was 
he  to  leave  it,  now  that  his  only  son  was  gone?  How 
was  he  to  spend  it?  He  could  not  pull  down  his 
barns  and  build  greater — for  the  builders  were  all 
fighting.  He  would  buy  a  country  seat.  He  didn't 
want  one,  but  he  would  have  it  all  the  same,  and  sell 
if  he  got  tired  of  it.  Besides,  his  wife  and  daughters 
would  like  it ;  perhaps  later  on  somebody  would  make 
him  a  Baronet.  Yes,  he  would  subscribe  heavily  to 
the  Party  funds,  when  the  war  was  over.  For  the 
rest  he  would  take  up  the  War  Loan.  What  if  the 
State  went  bankrupt?  He  didn't  care;  the  whole 
world  was  bankrupt,  his  own  life  included.  And  he 
felt  ashamed  of  himself  when  he  thought  of  what 
was  going  on  at  the  Front.  Making  money  in  heaps 
while  those  poor  fellows  were  being  slaughtered  in 
heaps  and  his  own  flesh  and  blood  was  being  tor- 
tured. In  the  night  he  would  dream  of  heaps,  of 
piles,  of  mountains:  mountains  of  corpses  on  this 
side,  mountains  of  money  on  that.  There  were  times 
when  these  men  loathed  themselves.  There  were 
times,  again,  when  they  were  bored  to  death  by  their 
ever  mounting  accumulations. 

"Do  you  know,"  cried  one  of  them  as  he  drank 
champagne  with  his  companions  at  the  Conservative 
Club,  "do  you  know  what  I  would  thank  God  for?" 
"We  can't  imagine  you  thanking  God  for  anything," 

82 


SMOKEOVER  GROWS  RICH 

was  the  answer.     "Well,"  he  said,  "I  would  thank 
God  for  a  Capital  Levy." 

Another  said: 

"Where's  the  sense  of  making  money  in  this  way? 
They  just  fitch  it  at  you.  Why,  you  can't  even  do 
'em  in.  Last  week  I  quoted  'em  my  stuff  at  30j.  a 
hundred- weight j  that's  a  profit  of  200  per  cent.j 
and,  by  God,  I  got  a  letter  by  return  of  post  offering 
me  ^iSs.  I've  sold  'em  a  thousand  tons  at  that  price. 
I  tell  you,  there's  no  S'port  in  it.  It  isn't  good  enough 
for  the  kiddies  to  play  at." 

"If  you  want  sport,"  said  his  companion,  "why 
don't  you  go  in  with  Rumbelow?  He'll  give  you  a 
run  for  your  money." 

"Oh,  that's  another  line  altogether.  Rumbelow's 
in  Art  J  I'm  only  in  business.  But  I'll  tell  you 
another  thing.  They  ought  to  have  let  Rumbelow 
run  this  show.  They  say  he  made  'em  the  offer. 
He'd  have  saved  the  country  thousands  of  millions. 
Good  for  us  they  didn't  take  him  on!  If  they  had, 
your  old  Dutch  wouldn't  be  blazin'  with  diamonds, 
and  me  and  you  wouldn't  be  swillin'  Heidsieck  at 
two  guineas  a  bottle.  By  the  way,  how's  that  lad  of 
yours  on  the  minesweeper?" 

"Not  heard  from  him  for  a  month." 

"Fishy,  ain't  it?" 

No,  for  all  its  roaring  wealth  and  flowing  cham- 
pagne Smokeover  was  not  a  cheerful  place,  seldom 
visited  by  the  sun  at  the  best  of  times,  and  now  over- 
shadowed by  the  black  wings  of  the  Angel  of  Death. 
That  woman  who  bought  the  sealskin  coat.  What 
was  her  motive?  The  love  of  finery,  think  you? 
Hear  what  she  said  to  her  neighbour  over  the  back- 

83 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

yard  fence.  "I've  done  it,  Mrs.  Perkins,  to  spite 
God.  I  prayed  him  awful  to  spare  our  Joe.  And 
now  he's  just  been  killed.  I'm  going  to  get  a  bit  of 
my  own  back  again  out  of  the  old  monkey."  That 
girl  who  has  had  an  illegitimate  child.  Light-of- 
love,  say  you?  Her  own  version  is  different.  "I 
knew  my  Bill  would  never  come  back.  .  .  .  And  I 
wanted  him  to  leave  me  a  remembrance."  .   .   . 

Among  the  many  admirable  "movements"  for 
which  the  City  of  Smokeover  was  famous,  was  the 
Branch  of  the  Society  for  Ethical  Culture  already 
mentioned  by  the  other  Voice.  In  one  of  the  local 
directories  it  appeared  under  the  head  of  "Places  of 
Worship"  j  in  another  under  the  head  of  "Clubs  and 
Societies."  The  members  of  the  Branch  were 
divided  among  themselves  as  to  which  of  the  two  was 
the  correct  caption  for  their  "movement"  j  but  the 
discussion  of  the  matter  had  proved  so  acrimonious 
and  absorbed  so  much  of  the  intellectual  energy 
needed  for  greater  things,  that  finally  the  question 
was  dropped  by  common  consent  and  the  two  direc- 
tories left  to  have  it  their  own  way.  It  was  a  pecul- 
iarity of  the  Ethical  Society,  at  least  of  its  Smokeover 
Branch,  that  the  members  could  never  agree  as  to 
whether  their  cult  was  "a  religion"  or  something 
else. 

The  Smokeover  Ethical  Society  was  active  and 
enlightened  j  but  it  was  small,  and  obstinately  refused 
to  grow  larger.  A  Society  more  up-to-date  in  the 
programmes  it  offered  to  the  public  you  could  not 
imagine;  the  last  thing  out  in  science,  politics,  phi- 
losophy and  social  reform  was  always  its  theme.  The 

84 


SMOKEOVER  GROWS  RICH 

members  were  most  excellent  people,  with  a  leaning 
perhaps  to  the  iconoclastic  sidej  several  professors 
of  the  local  university  were  among  themj  there  was 
the  headmistress  of  a  leading  school  j  the  Warden  of 
the  Women's  Settlement;  a  radical  lawyer;  a  dentist  j 
a  banker's  clerk;  a  male  designer  of  women's  frocks; 
several  spiritualists;  two  labour  agitators;  three  or 
four  argumentative  working  men;  and  last,  but  not 
least,  a  beaming  champion  of  the  Simple  Life,  who 
lived  in  a  caravan,  and  nourished  himself  on  crushed 
oats  which  he  ate  out  of  a  nose-bag,  like  a  horse, 
thereby  avoiding  the  use  of  crockery.  His  name  was 
Whistlefield. 

These  persons  were  intent  on  a  great  moral  refor- 
mation. But,  alas,  the  public  at  large  showed  no 
eagerness  to  be  morally  reformed,  for  it  is  only  the 
moral  who  are  interested  in  morality!  Lecturers  of 
great  ability  were  brought  in  from  all  parts  of  the 
country,  and  sometimes  a  crowd  would  be  gathered; 
but  next  week,  when  there  was  local  talent  on  the 
platform,  only  the  stalwarts  of  the  Society  would  be 
present.  The  stalwarts,  moreover,  were  not  all  like- 
minded;  they  had  the  fiercest  arguments  among 
themselves  and  the  meeting  generally  broke  up  with- 
out any  conclusion  being  registered. 

Then  came  the  war,  and  with  it  a  breath,  or  rather 
a  blast,  of  new  life  began  to  stir  the  Ethical  Society. 
"Reconstruction"  was  in  the  air,  and  at  this  magic 
word  morality  seemed  to  rise  from  the  dead  and  to 
become  positively  attractive.  The  Society  took  up 
Reconstruction.  It  began  to  reconstruct  everything 
in  the  heavens  above  and  on  the  earth  beneath;  and 
the  public  was  excited.    Never  before  had  such  pro- 

85 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

grammes  been  offered  to  Smokeoverj  never  before 
had  such  audiences  gathered  to  hear  them  developed. 
In  one  winter  the  Society  reconstructed  Religion, 
Morality,  Education,  Finance,  Government,  the 
Church,  Literature,  Philosophy,  International  Poli- 
tics, Art,  Housing,  Agriculture,  Manners,  Dress, 
Marriage,  the  Family,  Labour,  Capital,  Diet,  the 
Drink  Trade,  the  Universities  and  the  Elementary 
Schools.  Name  anything  of  importance  and  the 
Committee  would  immediately  put  it  into  the  hands 
of  an  expert  reconstructor  and  announce  a  public 
address.  For  in  those  days  Reconstruction  was  a 
roaring  lion,  seeking  what  and  whom  it  might  devour. 
It  was  like  the  lion  in  The  French  Language  Made 
Easjy  which  "ate  up  the  clergyman's  boots  and  my 
grandmother's  inkpot,"  and  presumably  the  clergy- 
man and  my  grandmother  as  well. 

One  lecturer  would  reconstruct  Smokeoverj  his 
successor,  next  week,  would  reconstruct  the  Universe  j 
but  nobody  asked  whether  Smokeover  as  recon- 
structed by  the  first  gentleman  would  fit  in  with  the 
Universe  as  reconstructed  by  the  second;  enough 
that  both  were  to  be  pulled  to  pieces  and  then  put 
together  on  a  new  model.  Indeed  the  most  casual 
inspection  of  these  reconstructions  revealed  that  they 
were  all  at  sixes  and  sevens,  and  that  any  attempt  to 
carry  them  out  would  result  in  a  general  melee.  At 
the  time,  however,  it  was  as  much  as  your  reputation 
was  worth  to  call  attention  to  this,  for  the  recon- 
structors  were  a  touchy  generation;  so  the  point  had 
to  be  passed  over  in  silence. 

In  all  this  the  Society's  attitude  towards  the  war 
was  thoroughly  patriotic.    By  way  of  interlude  to  the 

86 


SMOKEOVER  GROWS  RICH 

general  orgy  of  Reconstruction,  lectures  were  intro- 
duced on  "The  Fundamental  Righteousness  of  the 
Allied  Cause"  J  it  was  proved  to  the  hilt  by  experts 
in  righteousness  j  and  the  point  was  laid  down  again 
and  again  that,  unless  "we"  won  the  war,  the  world 
would  be  reconstructed,  not  by  "us,"  but  by  the 
Germans,  a  calamity  not  to  be  thought  of.  This  way 
of  putting  things  was  resented  by  the  pacifists  of  the 
Society,  and  the  two  Labour  agitators  resigned. 

Yet  these  things,  like  many  another  grotesque 
phenomenon,  were  not  without  their  deeper  root 
in  the  tragic  soil  of  human  life.  It  was  a  dark  and 
terrible  timej  Ramah  was  filled  with  lamentation, 
and  Rachel  was  weeping  for  her  children.  Beneath 
the  wandering  intellect  was  the  broken  heart,  which  is 
the  same  whether  you  live  in  a  slum  or  a  palace,  in 
Smokeover  or  Essen,  in  London  or  Berlin.  Every- 
where the  phenomena  were  alike  and  the  causes  iden- 
tical. Some  would  seek  their  consolation  in  the  mut- 
terings  of  wizards  j  some  became  the  neophytes  of 
strange  religions;  some  ran  to  the  Crucifix  and  em- 
braced it;  while  others,  more  numerous  than  all  the 
rest,  turned  angrily  on  the  world  that  had  smitten 
them  so  cruelly,  and  would  have  broken  it  to  pieces. 
Hence  that  fever  of  the  public  mind  which  they 
called  Reconstruction.  It  spoke  the  language  of 
social  science ;  it  was  discussed  and  elaborated  by  men 
without  emotion;  a  "Ministry"  was  formed  to  carry 
it  on;  but  within  all  this  lay  the  agony  of  a  dis- 
illusion, the  delirium  of  a  broken  heart.  The  Society 
for  Ethical  Culture  was  no  exception. 

The  first  President  of  the  Smokeover  Branch  was 
Mr.  William  Hooker,  M.A.,  J.P.,  a  public-spirited 

87 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

citizen,  a  man  of  commanding  presence  and  dignified 
countenance.  He  was  a  manufacturer  of  clocks.  The 
business  had  been  founded  by  his  great-grandfather 
at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  passed  from 
father  to  son  until  in  the  year  1895  it  came  into  the 
hands  of  William  Hooker.  It  had  an  unbroken 
record  of  prosperity,  having  moved  with  the  times, 
as  a  clock  factory  should.  In  1914  it  was  in  full 
swing.  It  employed  500  operatives,  who  were  well 
paid,  and  had  a  yearly  output  of  5,000  clocks  with  a 
high  reputation  for  excellence  all  over  the  world. 
The  "works"  stood  on  the  very  edge  of  the  City,  with 
a  slum  area  on  one  side  and  wide  open  ground  on 
the  other. 

The  average  net  profit  to  the  firm,  after  all  the 
costs  of  production  had  been  paid,  was  8j.  on  each 
clock;  and  as  all  this  went  into  the  pocket  of  Mr. 
Hooker  he  had  a  clear  income  of  £2,000,  an  amount 
which  maintained  a  remarkable  uniformity  from  year 
to  year,  good  times  and  bad.  His  clocks  found  a 
ready  market  even  when  other  trades  were  slack, 
and  they  leapt  over  the  tariffs  of  foreign  nations. 

Mr.  Hooker's  friends  often  urged  him  to  increase 
the  business.  But  he  had  no  desire  to  do  this;  having 
other  pre-occupations.  Moreover,  his  social  con- 
science being  tender,  he  was  afraid  of  becoming  over- 
rich.  Even  as  it  was,  he  would  often  ask  himself 
uncomfortable  questions.  But  he  had  made  a  calcu- 
lation, and  found  that  were  the  whole  of  his  profits 
to  be  distributed  among  the  work-people  their  wages 
would  be  raised  only  one  shilling  and  sixpence  a  week 
all  round.  This,  he  thought,  would  not  make  much 
difference  to  them,  though  perhaps  the  "system" 

88 


SMOKEOVER  GROWS  RICH 

might  be  wrong  which,  every  year,  brought  five 
thousand  times  eight  shillings  into  the  pockets  of  one 
man.  On  the  whole,  the  sum  was  not  excessive  as  a 
charge  for  the  management  of  so  large  a  concern, 
though  he  had  to  confess  that  the  actual  labour  of 
management  was  light,  the  business  having  been  so 
well  constructed  and  wound  up  by  his  forbears  that 
it  ran  like  one  of  his  own  clocks.  Mr.  Hooker  had 
also  read  Ruskin.  It  pleased  him,  therefore,  to 
think  of  his  good,  honest,  comely  clocks,  and  of  the 
benefits  they  conferred  upon  mankind.  "At  this 
moment,"  he  would  sometimes  reflect,  "there  are 
hundreds  of  thousands  faithfully  ticking  in  many 
lands.  They  are  reminding  my  fellow  men  of  Time 
and  Eternity,  of  Duty  to  be  done,  of  Life  and  of 
Death.  They  are  speaking  the  Truth.  They  are 
registering  the  order  of  the  world  and  contributing 
to  its  maintenance.  They  are  doing  moral  work." 
Thus,  on  the  whole,  his  conscience  was  at  ease. 

Ail  that  is  best  in  a  nation  of  shopkeepers  was  rep- 
resented in  the  traditions  of  the  Hooker  family — 
brains,  rectitude  and  kindness  of  heart.  The  finances 
of  the  shop  were  sound;  it  was  exceptionally  clean 
in  its  appointments  and  in  its  personnel;  the  goods 
were  of  the  very  best,  and  the  buyer  could  always 
count  on  promptitude,  fairness  and  courtesy.  Shop- 
keeping  of  this  character  is  apt  to  develop  a  certain 
moral  earnestness,  which  pervades  the  shop  like  an 
atmosphere  and  descends  from  father  to  son.  Need- 
less to  say  the  Hooker  family  were  originally 
Quakers. 

Mr.  Hooker  combined  the  advantages  of  a  Uni- 
versity education  with  those  of  a  business  training. 

89 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

His  father,  intending  him  for  the  business,  had  sent 
him  in  the  'eighties  to  Cambridge,  where  he  studied 
Political  Economy  and  graduated  with  high  distinc- 
tion in  Mental  and  Moral  Science.  But  his  religious 
beliefs  fell  away  and  he  ceased  to  call  himself  a 
Quaker,  or  even  a  Christian.  This,  however,  only 
served  to  increase  the  moral  earnestness  which  a 
Christian  ancestry  had  instilled  into  his  blood.  His 
life  now  presented  itself  to  him  as  a  moral  problem, 
which  it  was  his  duty  to  solve,  and  to  solve  moreover 
in  a  definite  and  businesslike  way.  He  would  not 
leave  Cambridge,  so  he  resolved,  until  he  had 
equipped  himself  with  a  working  philosophy  of  life. 
At  last  he  believed  that  he  had  found  it.  Reading 
widely,  and  thinking  deeply  on  what  he  read,  he 
came  to  this  conclusion:  that  the  true  and  final  busi- 
ness of  every  man  is  to  affirm  his  own  personality, 
but  always  in  such  a  way  as  to  help  others  to  affirm 
theirs  J  in  other,  words,  to  treat  all  men  as  ends  in 
themselves,  and  to  think  evil  of  no  man.  With  this 
equipment,  which  he  intended  to  articulate  and 
develop,  he  went  into  business,  as  a  man  furnished 
for  the  battle  of  life  and  ready  for  all  contingen- 
cies— a  man  with  Principles. 

Refraining  from  public  utterance  during  his 
father's  life,  lest  he  should  break  the  old  man's  heart, 
William  Hooker  took  up  the  work  of  the  Ethical 
Society  as  soon  as  the  way  was  clear.  It  became  his 
hobby,  his  preoccupation,  his  delight,  and  above 
all — his  Duty.  Fortunately  his  business,  being  well 
wound  up,  ran  of  itself.  To  the  conduct  of  its 
aff"airs  he  gave  as  much  time  as  was  necessary  j  to 
philosophical  reading,  to  the  preparation  of  his  lec- 

90 


SMOKEOVER  GROWS  RICH 

tures  to  the  Society  and  to  the  work  of  organizing 
its  propaganda  all  over  the  country,  he  gave  as  much 
time  as  he  could.  If  you  called  at  the  factory  and 
asked  to  see  the  principal,  as  likely  as  not  you  would 
be  told  that  he  was  away  on  "ethical  business,"  a 
phrase  well  understood  in  the  office,  though  some- 
what bewildering  to  the  stranger.  It  meant  that 
Hooker  was  attending  a  fortnight's  conference  of 
Ethical  Societies  in  London,  or  that  he  was  giving 
a  course  of  lectures  at  a  Settlement,  or  that  he  was 
organizing  a  new  branch  in  another  town.  But  you 
would  find  a  most  competent  manager  in  charge, 
who  would  attend  to  your  affairs  and  send  you  away 
satisfied. 

Mr.  Hooker  had  three  sons,  fine  strapping  fellows 
with  the  excellent  Hooker  brains — his  only  children. 
They  went  to  the  war,  and  after  surviving  three  years 
of  active  service  without  a  wound,  toward  the  end 
all  three  were  killed  in  rapid  succession,  one  in  a 
manner  too  horrible  to  be  thought  of.  These  blows 
cut  down  to  the  roots  of  the  clockmaker's  life  and 
liberated  strange  emotions  he  had  never  felt  before. 
Then  his  wife,  an  excellent  woman  and  devoted 
mother,  went  half  insane,  and  took  to  drink.  Where- 
upon Mr.  Hooker  became  less  regular  in  attending 
the  meetings  of  the  Society  j  seemed  absent-minded 
whenever  he  turned  up;  grew  tepid  about  reconstruc- 
tion, and  had  the  air  of  a  man  who  was  bored  with 
morality.     But  of  that  more  anon. 

Another  incident  contributed  to  the  same  result. 
Not  long  after  these  calamities  had  occurred  there 
came  down  to  Smokeover  a  certain  lecturer,  whose 
remarks  gave  offence  to  the  more  enthusiastic  of  the 

91 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

ethical  reformers.  He  was  announced  to  discourse 
on  "The  Perils  of  Reconstruction."  He  began  by 
telling  his  audience  that  though  many  things  might 
be  changed  after  the  war,  the  multiplication  table 
would  have  to  remain  as  it  wasj  a  point,  he  said,  that 
was  in  some  danger  of  being  overlooked.  He  then 
launched  into  figures,  intended  to  show  that  all  the 
belligerents  after  the  war  would  be  over  head  and 
ears  in  debt  and  on  the  verge  of  bankruptcy.  For 
some  time  afterwards  these  debts,  he  said,  would  be 
used  as  currency  and  things  would  be  quite  lively  j 
but  a  dark  hour  would  follow  when  the  bills  would 
have  to  be  paid.  "Then  look  out!"  he  cried j  "three 
years  after  the  war  you  people  will  not  be  recon- 
structing Society.  You  will  be  asking  where 
to-morrow's  breakfast  is  to  come  from."  It  was  a 
horrible  wet  blanket,  and  in  the  discussion  which  fol- 
lowed the  lecturer  was  hotly  denounced  as  a  pessi- 
mist, a  cynic  and  a  traitor  to  the  ideal.  Hooker,  who 
was  in  the  chair,  felt  most  unhappy.  The  last  con- 
solation he  had  for  the  horrors  of  the  war  was  being 
taken  away  from  him,  for,  in  those  days,  as  we  have 
seen,  "reconstruction"  was  the  balm  in  which  many 
hurt  minds  sought  relief.  After  the  lecture,  the 
speaker,  a  well-known  financial  expert,  went  home 
with  him  and  the  two  men  sat  up  till  the  small  hours 
of  the  morning  discussing  the  situation.  The  result 
was  that  Reconstruction  became  a  word  which,  even 
when  spelt  with  a  capital  letter,  did  not  impress  Mr. 
Hooker;  for  he  was  a  man  of  great  intelligence. 
Weary  with  the  burden  of  his  private  sorrow  he  had 
no  heart  for  the  discussions  of  the  Ethical  Society; 
grew  impatient  with  all  its  definitions  of  the  Supreme 

92 


SMOKEOVER  GROWS  RICH 

Good  J  lost  interest  in  the  Relation  of  the  Individual 
to  the  Social  Whole  j  became  sceptical  about  Progress, 
and  seemed  to  himself  to  be  living  in  a  world  so 
utterly  gone  to  pieces  that  it  could  never  be  recon- 
structed by  the  art  of  man. 

But  the  greatest  of  all  Mr.  Hooker's  troubles  has 
yet  to  be  told.    He  had  become  immensely  rich. 


93 


CHAPTER  TWO 
The  Profiteer 

A  S  in  a  crowded  city,  where  there  is  no  regulation 
-^^  of  traffic,  men  drive  their  vehicles  in  fear  of 
collision  at  the  street  corners,  and  the  best  driver  is 
often  at  the  mercy  of  the  worst,  so  were  the  nations 
of  the  earth  in  the  troubled  times  when  Mr.  Hooker 
began  his  adventures  as  a  rich  man.  Geography 
showed  these  nations  fixed  in  their  places  on  a  map 
of  the  world  j  but  history  showed  them  in  movement y 
on  lines  that  crossed  at  a  thousand  points,  in  spaces 
where  there  was  little  room  to  manoeuvre  and  where 
the  rules  of  the  road,  if  there  were  any,  were  not 
observed.  Some  of  them  had  set  up  within  their  own 
borders  admirable  systems  of  government  by  con- 
sent of  the  governed,  but  their  plans  were  being 
constantly  upset  by  the  doings  of  their  neighbours, 
who  drove  their  vehicles  at  the  international  cross- 
ings without  the  least  regard  to  the  consent  of  the 
others  who  were  coming  full  tilt  round  the  corner. 
Self-government  is  no  exception  to  the  rule  that  the 
real  value  of  political  arrangements  is  always  far  less 
than  the  face-value.  The  people  in  a  self-governed 
country  would  decide,  for  example,  that  their  taxes 
must  be  reduced,  and,  after  making  innumerable 
speeches,  would  hold  a  general  election  to  return  a 

94 


THE  PROFITEER 

government  for  that  purpose  j  when,  lo  and  behold, 
another  government,  a  foreign  one,  would  threaten 
war  upon  the  first,  and  the  taxes,  instead  of  going 
down,  would  go  up  by  leaps  and  bounds.  And 
strange  it  was  to  observe  how  these  people,  whose 
taxes  were  thus  being  determined  by  causes  over 
which  they  had  no  control,  would  cling  tenaciously  to 
the  belief  that  they  were  being  taxed  only  by  their 
own  consent,  declaring,  in  grave  books  of  history, 
that  the  National  Debt  had  been  created  by  their 
elected  representatives,  but  forgetting  Napoleon  who 
made  them  create  it.  There  were  other  delusions  of 
the  same  kind  which  added  greatly  to  the  general  con- 
fusion of  the  world.  Behind  the  order  that  reigned 
in  the  parts  was  the  disorder  that  reigned  in  the 
whole.  And  of  course  the  disorderliness  of  the 
whole  was  constantly  disturbing  the  orderliness  of 
the  parts.  Not  even  in  the  ages  of  primitive  savagery 
were  the  fortunes  of  mankind  more  insecure. 

In  spite  of  the  delusions  aforesaid  the  fact  of  this 
general  disorder  was  gradually  forcing  itself  into 
recognition.  For  a  long  time  past  evidence  had  been 
growing  that  human  affairs  were  out  of  hand,  that 
however  well  governed  the  world  might  be  in  parts 
the  huge  totality  was  not  governed  at  all.  It  was 
becoming  clearer  every  day  that  the  course  of  events, 
both  at  home  and  abroad,  corresponded  neither  to 
the  consent  of  the  governed  nor  to  the  consent  of 
anybody  else.  Strictly  speaking  it  represented  what 
nobody  wanted.  Civilization  was  not  proceeding 
according  to  plan.  It  was  taking  a  line  of  its  own, 
paying  no  regard  to  the  desires  of  the  multitudes  nor 
to  the  programmes  of  the  reformers.     Behind  the 

95 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

backs  of  all  the  Parliaments  somebody  was  playing 
tricks  with  the  fortunes  of  mankind. 

Were  all  men  philosophers  these  things  would 
doubtless  have  been  set  down  to  their  proper  causes. 
But  all  men  are  not  philosophers.  The  instinct  which 
leads  the  savage  to  knock  off  the  head  of  his  fetish 
because  his  hunting  has  failed,  or  a  spoilt  and  pas- 
sionate child  to  slap  his  mother  because  he  is  suffer- 
ing from  the  toothache,  is  still  strong  in  human 
nature  and  in  the  crowd.  So,  in  the  present  instance, 
the  discovery  that  things  were  going  wrong  had  the 
effect,  first,  of  throwing  society  into  an  exceptionally 
bad  temper,  and,  second,  of  stimulating  the  search 
for  a  culprit  upon  whose  head  the  common  anger 
might  be  discharged. 

The  belief  gained  ground  that  villainy  was  abroad, 
and  though  no  price  was  officially  put  on  the  head  of 
the  villain,  it  was  generally  understood  that  his  cap- 
ture would  be  a  signal  service  to  mankind.  So  every- 
one was  on  the  alert  to  detect  the  author  of  this 
strange  miscarriage  in  the  world's  affairs.  In  litera- 
ture, in  the  press,  in  the  pulpit  and  in  all  places  of 
resort  or  assembly  where  men  take  exercise  in 
denouncing  the  misdeeds  of  their  fellows,  the  self- 
constituted  detective  was  at  work.  Few  were  so  for- 
tunate as  not  to  be  suspected  of  having  a  hand  in  the 
mischief.  The  air  was  full  of  mutual  recriminations. 
Labour  said  it  was  Capital.  Capital  said  it  was 
Labour.  The  revolutionaries  said  it  was  the  powers- 
that-be.  The  powers-that-be  said  it  was  the  revolu- 
tionaries. The  Government  said  it  was  the  Opposi- 
tion. The  Opposition  said  it  was  the  Government. 
The  women  said  it  was  the  men,  and  were  burning 

96 


THE  PROFITEER 

houses  and  haystacks  to  prove  their  accusation.  The 
name  of  the  villain  was  Legion.  Some  blamed  the 
Churches  J  some  the  philosophers}  some  the  school- 
masters j  some  the  newspapers  j  some  the  taverns. 
But  few  were  wise  enough  to  blame  themselves. 
Never  had  satisfaction  with  self  been  more  compla- 
cent and  dissatisfaction  with  others  more  threatening. 
There  was  still  abundance  of  loving-kindness  in  the 
world,  but  it  was  mostly  out  of  sight,  where  the  cine- 
matograph operators  and  the  newspaper  reporters 
could  hardly  be  expected  to  find  it. 

It  is  one  of  the  results  of  free  speech,  and  of 
democratic  institutions  in  general,  that  people  who 
think  themselves  innocent  are  provided  with  unlim- 
ited facilities  for  proving  other  people  guilty. 
Democracy  is  a  system  which  endows  the  citizen  with 
the  utmost  freedom  to  discharge  his  responsibilities 
on  to  the  shoulders  of  somebody  else,  and  with  the 
widest  range  in  selecting  a  culprit  for  whatever  goes 
wrong.  There  is  no  kind  of  freedom  men  value 
more  highly  or  of  which  they  make  a  readier  use. 
The  disadvantage  of  the  system  is  that  a  world  where 
everybody  is  free  to  choose  his  own  culprit  is  pre- 
cisely the  kind  of  world  where  the  real  culprit  is 
most  likely  to  escape  detection.  All  he  has  to  do  is 
to  join  in  the  general  hue-and-cry  and  shout  "Stop 
thief!"  a  little  louder  than  the  rest.  The  Immor- 
tals, who  watched  these  proceedings  from  their  invis- 
ible stations,  knew  well  enough  who  the  real  culprit 
was,  and  would  sometimes  whisper  the  secret  to  an 
incredulous  world. 

But  these  whispers  produced  no  effect  save  indig- 
nation against  the  Immortals  j  and  in  1914  a  position 

97 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

had  been  reached  where  every  class,  interest  or  party 
was  regarded  by  some  other  class,  interest  or  party 
as  guilty  of  the  miscarriage  of  civilization.  To  the 
question  "Who  is  the  culprit?"  there  were,  perhaps, 
a  thousand  different  answers,  one  or  other  of  which 
was  certain  to  find  you  out. 

All  of  a  sudden  this  chaos  of  angry  interactions 
found  vent  in  a  world-wide  explosion.  In  an  instant 
the  problem  of  culpability  was  simplified  j  the  thou- 
sand answers  were  reduced  to  two.  For  the  world 
had  split  into  two  groups,  each  believing  that  it  had 
found  the  culprit,  the  villain,  the  enemy,  the  troubler 
of  mankind,  in  the  other.  And  since  there  was  no 
arbitrator  to  judge  between  them  (nor  would  his 
award  have  been  accepted  if  there  had  been)  they 
fought  it  out,  until,  after  four  and  a  quarter  years 
of  unimaginable  bloodshed,  one  of  them  was  deci- 
sively beaten. 

The  culprit  had  been  found,  convicted  and  sen- 
tenced. To  all  parties  the  cost  had  been  enormous. 
Half  Europe  had  been  ruined;  hundreds  of  millions 
of  people,  who  were  offensive  to  each  other,  had  been 
punished  J  posterity,  on  both  sides,  had  been  penal- 
ized for  generations  to  come;  vengeance  had  slaked 
her  thirst  in  blood  and  tears.  "And  now,"  said  the 
sanguine,  "wrath  having  burnt  itself  out,  let  us  begin 
to  love  one  another." 

Alas!  the  echoes  of  the  guns  had  hardly  ceased  to 
reverberate,  and  the  steam  from  the  blood-soaked 
battlefields  had  only  just  been  blown  away  by  the 
kindly  winds,  when  the  old  question  broke  out  anew. 
The  culprit  was  still  at  large!  The  parties,  the 
interests,  the  factions,  the  groups,  the  classes,  the 

98 


THE  PROFITEER 

nations,  faced  one  another  as  before,  each  pointing 
a  minatory  finger  at  one  of  its  neighbours,  and  cry- 
ing "Thine  is  the  guilt!  But  for  thee  all  would  be 
well,"  And  so,  once  more,  the  moving  circle  of  Dis- 
trust, which  whoso  enters  must  play  the  double  part 
of  fugitive  and  pursuer,  resumed  its  vicious  revolu- 
tion, like  a  roundabout  of  wooden  horses  at  a  country 
fair,  with  a  steam  organ  to  grind  out  devil's  music 
while  the  senseless  chase  goes  on. 

Such  was  the  state  of  things  in  the  world  at  large 
when  Mr.  Hooker  made  his  debut  as  a  millionaire 
in  the  city  of  Smokeover.  Needless  to  say,  there 
were  not  wanting  many,  both  in  Smokeover  and  else- 
where, who  were  quick  to  perceive  that  a  promising 
culprit  had  appeared  upon  the  scene.  The  hue-and- 
cry  was  immediately  at  his  heels  and  no  mercy  was 
shown  him  by  any  of  his  pursuers.  Mr.  Hooker's 
name  was  soon  converted  into  a  synonym  for  social 
guilt.  Mentioned  at  a  public  meeting,  or  in  a  news- 
paper article,  it  acted  as  a  lightning  conductor  for 
all  that  was  fuliginous  in  the  temper  of  Smokeover. 
It  became  a  figure  of  speech  in  the  local  vernacular, 
and  was  used  by  revolutionary  orators  to  indicate  the 
most  dangerous  class  of  social  criminals.  They  were 
"the  Hookers  of  industry,"  "the  Hookers  of  Com- 
merce," "the  Hookers  of  finance,"  "the  Hookers  of 
civilization" — and  down  with  them  all!  The  name 
itself,  the  mere  sound  of  it,  gave  point  to  the  accusa- 
tion. In  the  minds  of  an  angry  crowd  it  conjured 
up  images  which  set  the  demonstrators  booing  till 
they  were  hoarse.  For  Mr.  Hooker  had  been  freely 
represented  in  local  caricature:  sometimes  as  a  mon- 
strous beast  of  prey  with  claws  or  talons  j  sometimes 

99 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

as  a  bloated  giant  with  his  grappling  hook  in  the 
vitals  of  the  working  man. 

How  it  came  to  pass  that  a  man  so  good  found 
himself  in  a  position  so  uncomfortable  the  Legend 
has  now  to  tell. 

When  the  industries  of  the  country  were  mobil- 
ized for  the  purposes  of  war,  Smokeover  imme- 
diately answered  the  call.  Mr.  Hooker's  clock-fac- 
tory was  among  the  first  to  be  commandeered.  Its 
operatives  were  skilled,  its  machinery  was  easily 
adaptable,  and  the  open  country  on  one  side  of  it 
gave  scope  for  unlimited  extensions.  Mr.  Hooker 
was  told  that  there  were  enough  clocks  in  existence 
to  keep  the  world  well  informed  as  to  the  time  of 
day  until  the  war  was  over,  and  that  his  plant  must 
be  converted  without  a  moment's  delay  for  the  manu- 
facture on  an  immense  scale  of  timing  mechanism 
for  shells,  torpedoes  and  mines  j  of  hand-grenades, 
the  locks  of  rifles,  the  working  parts  of  machine  guns 
and  of  a  hundred  other  things  whose  action  depended 
on  fine  springs  and  the  interlocking  of  small  wheels. 

His  patriotism  assented  j  it  was  a  righteous  cause, 
and  almost  before  he  had  realized  what  was  happen- 
ing the  experts  were  on  the  scene.  Then  came  the 
instructors  from  Woolwich  Arsenal,  and  all  day  long 
there  were  groups  of  men  and  women  gathered 
round  the  machines  learning  their  lessons.  The 
draughtsmen,  the  architects  and  the  surveyors  fol- 
lowed; railway  sidings  were  thrown  out  on  the  open 
fields  adjoining  J  an  army  of  workmen  were  digging, 
shovelling  and  laying  tracks.  Piles  of  bricks,  stacks 
of  timber,  dumps  of  cement,  train-loads  of  steel  gir- 

100 


THE  PROFITEER 

ders  and  building  material  of  every  kind  began  to 
appear  j  a  thousand  hammers  were  banging  day  and 
night  5  and  presently  a  group  of  immense  buildings 
rose  like  an  exhalation.  "Shells,  shells!"  the  public 
was  shouting,  and  since  the  fuses  were  here,  why  not 
make  the  shells  themselves  next  door?  Is  not  this 
Smokeover  the  Mighty  with  the  labour  on  the  spot 
and  the  raw  material  not  far  off?  To  be  sure,  said 
the  Government,  and  Mr.  Hooker  nodded  assent. 
And  why  not  explosives  and  poison  gas  to  fill  the 
shells — Smokeover  can  do  that!  To  be  sure,  again 
said  the  Government.  So  up  went  another  group 
of  buildings  bigger  than  the  first,  and,  beyond  that, 
streets  of  huts,  with  the  flag  of  the  Y.M.C.A.  flut- 
tering at  intervals,  eight  canteens,  a  hospital  with 
doctors  and  trained  nurses  in  attendance,  a  recreation 
ground,  a  welfare  building,  a  new  water  main  and 
drainage  system,  in  fact,  a  town.  Eight  thousand 
operatives  were  assembled,  men  and  women,  of 
whom  some  lived  in  the  huts  while  the  rest  came  and 
went  in  trainloads  every  day;  and  the  seventh  com- 
mandment was  none  too  well  kept. 

And  now  "Hooker  &  Co.,"  blown  out  to  enormous 
magnitudes  and  transformed  in  a  fashion  to  make  its 
Quaker  founders  turn  in  their  graves  and  to  paralyze 
the  mainspring  of  every  clock  the  factory  had  turned 
out,  was  in  full  blast — one  huge  stithy  of  war, 
sprawling  over  many  acres  of  "England's  green  and 
pleasant  land."  Viewing  the  sheds  and  warehouses 
from  the  windows  of  a  passing  train  you  wondered 
when  they  would  come  to  an  end;  you  counted  the 
trainloads  of  shells  waiting  in  the  siding;  if  it  was 
day  you  watched  the  great  chimneys  belching  smoke, 

101 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

and  suddenly  put  up  the  windows  to  keep  out  the 
acrid  fumes  from  the  steaming  vatsj  if  it  was  night 
you  saw  the  sky  lit  up  for  miles  around  with  the 
flames  of  "Satanic  forges"  raging  below — a  steering 
point  for  the  first  Zeppelins  that  crossed  the  seas.  It 
was  a  marvellous  transformation,  worthy  of  the 
Arabian  Nights.  It  was  a  prodigy.  It  was  used  as 
a  text,  or  object-lesson,  to  convince  incredulous  allies 
of  the  titanic  efforts  Great  Britain  was  making  to 
win  the  war.  French  statesmen,  taken  to  see  it  the 
day  after  their  landing  in  England,  exhausted  the 
dictionary  for  terms  of  admiration.  Neutrals  were 
staggered.  Business  experts  from  America  cried, 
"Great  snakes!"  and  booked  orders  for  a  million 
dollars'  worth  of  machinery  on  the  spot.  But  none 
was  more  amazed  that  Mr.  Hooker  himself.  Some- 
times, as  he  drove  up  to  the  works  in  his  Rolls-Royce, 
and  looked  on  the  scene  of  what  once  had  been  his 
innocent  clock-factory,  a  thought  would  cross  his 
mind  which  made  him  shudder,  and  challenged  reflec- 
tion. He  shuddered  to  think  of  the  ease  and  rapidity 
with  which  small  wheels  made  for  telling  men  the 
time  could  be  converted  into  enormous  mechanism 
for  blowing  their  souls  out  of  time  into  eternity. 

Sentries  walked  up  and  down  in  front  of  the  gates, 
or  guarded  the  dumps  j  detectives  prowled  about  on 
the  watch  for  German  spies.  All  day  long  taxi-cabs 
and  private  motors  would  drive  up  to  the  entrance, 
and  brisk  men  in  uniform  with  red  and  gold  on  their 
caps  would  leap  out.  Sometimes  the  detective,  after 
looking  in  at  the  window,  would  respectfully  open 
the  door  and  the  sentry  would  stand  to  the  salute. 
It  was  Sir  William  Robertson,  seeing  things  for  him- 

102 


THE  PROFITEER 

self  J  or  it  was  "our  military  expert"  escorting  a 
duchess  and  preparing  an  indictment  j  or  it  was  the 
Prime  Minister  to  confer  with  Mr.  Hooker;  or 
"them  two — did  you  see  'em,  Bill — that  long  bloke 
with  the  round  man  in  blue — blowed  if  I  don't  think 
it  was  K.  of  K.  and  old  Father  Joffer." 

And  the  money?  The  accounts  which  the  head 
cashier  brought  Mr.  Hooker  week  by  week  of  the 
money  that  was  rolling  in  and  the  money  that  was 
rolling  out  caused  him  to  gasp.  All  he  knew  dis- 
tinctly was  that  what  rolled  in  far  exceeded  what 
rolled  out.  The  generosity  of  the  Government  was 
amazing.  It  was  perpetually  atoning  to  Mr.  Hooker 
for  its  own  mistakes.  If  the  War  Council  were  all 
at  sixes  and  sevens,  if  a  disaster  occurred  in  Gallipoli 
or  a  hundred  thousand  men  were  blotted  out  in 
France,  the  result  to  Hooker  &  Co.  was  that  money 
rolled  their  way  in  a  more  impetuous  flood  than  ever. 
There  was  no  checking  it;  there  was  no  controlling  it: 
you  had  no  alternative  but  to  sit  at  the  receipt  of 
custom  and  rake  in  the  shekels.  The  thing  simply 
went  on.  It  went  on  for  three  years,  and  at  the  end 
of  that  time  Mr.  Hooker  possessed  a  fortune  of  two 
and  a  half  millions  sterling.  By  common  consent 
he  was  acclaimed  the  King  of  Profiteers. 

What  was  Mr.  Hooker  going  to  do  with  all  this 
wealth?  The  question  was  on  the  lips  of  many. 
Everybdy  seemed  to  know  what  he  would  do  with  it 
if  the  money  were  his,  though  of  the  hundreds  who 
gave  their  views  hardly  two  agreed.  Moreover  it  is 
one  thing  to  know  what  you  would  do  with  two  and 
a  half  millions  when  you  haven't  got  them,  and 
quite  another  thing  if  they  stand  to  your  credit  in 

103 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

the  bank.  The  first  is  easy  as  talking  j  the  second 
difficult  as  martyrdom — especially  if  you  happen  to 
be  President  of  a  Society  for  Ethical  Culture. 

Mr.  Hooker  had  asked  himself  the  question  long 
before  it  had  been  asked  by  anybody  elsej  and,  what 
is  more,  he  had  answered  it.  He  had  not  graduated 
in  Ethical  and  Political  Science  for  nothing  j  he  had 
not  lectured  up  and  down  the  country  for  twenty 
years  on  the  Moral  Ideal  without  meaning  what  he 
said.  He  knew  that  he  was  becoming  a  social  danger 
of  the  first  magnitude,  and  could  have  given  points 
to  any  moralist  who  had  taken  him  to  task  on  the 
subject.  He  had  studied  the  matter  from  every 
point  of  view  J  he  had  put  his  sensitive  conscience 
under  the  severest  cross-examination  j  and  he  had 
made  the  most  damaging  comparisons  against  him- 
self. "Rumbelow's  wealth,  for  example,"  he  had 
reflected,  "is  the  fruit  of  his  own  wickedness.  Mine 
is  the  fruit  of  the  wickedness  of  my  fellow  men — 
the  wickedness  which  has  caused  the  war.  Rumbelow 
can  at  least  plead  that  he  has  earned  his  by  his  wits. 
Mine  has  been  thrust  upon  me  by  the  force  of  cir- 
cumstances with  hardly  an  effort  of  my  own.  Which 
of  us  two  is  the  greater  villain,  the  more  despicable 
character?     Unquestionably  myself." 

Moreover,  sceptic  as  he  was  in  regard  to  matters 
of  which  other  men  speak  with  bated  breath,  he  had 
an  uncomfortable  feeling  that  somewhere  in  the  uni- 
verse there  was  a  Great  Inspector  of  Motives  who 
might  put  him  to  the  question  j  and  he  had  pictured 
to  himself  what  a  sorry  figure  he  would  cut  at  the 
Day  of  Judgment  if  he  were  asked  to  state  what  his 
motives  had  been  in  amassing  his  millions,  and  he 

104 


THE  PROFITEER 

could  only  reply,  with  his  thumb  in  his  mouth, 
"Please,  sir,  I  had  no  motives  at  all.  I  couldn't  help 
it."  Nor  was  his  peace  of  mind  increased  by  the 
knowledge  that  his  friends  in  the  Ethical  Society 
regarded  his  position  as  anomalous  and  compromis- 
ing, and  that  to  the  public  of  Smokeover  he  was 
becoming  an  object  of  dislike  and  contumely.  Once, 
when  his  name  had  been  mentioned  at  a  public  meet- 
ing in  the  City  Hall,  loud  cries  of  "humbug"  and 
"hypocrite"  had  risen  from  the  audience,  while  the 
name  of  Rumbelow,  which  had  been  mentioned  a 
moment  later,  was  greeted  with  thunders  of  applause. 

Tormented  by  these  questions  from  the  first 
moment  the  money  began  to  flow  in,  Mr.  Hooker 
had  set  himself  with  his  accustomed  moral  thorough- 
ness to  find  an  answer.  It  was  not  long  in  coming. 
"I  will  bide  my  time  and  let  the  thing  work  out  to  its 
conclusion.  I  will  endure  these  taunts  and  suspi- 
cions in  silence.  I  will  let  the  world  think  of  me 
what  it  will.  Then,  when  the  war  is  over,  I  will  use 
the  wealth  it  has  brought  me  for  the  purpose  of 
making  war  impossible  for  evermore.  I  will  use  it, 
to  the  last  penny,  in  promoting  the  cause  of  Ethical 
Culture  all  over  the  world.  I  will  spread  our 
Society  into  every  town  and  village  and  I  will  make 
it  my  residuary  legatee.  I  will  establish  a  great 
organization,  I  will  set  on  foot  an  immense  propa- 
ganda. I  will  make  an  atonement  for  myself  and  my 
fellow  men.  I  will  hoist  the  devil  with  his  own 
petard." 

Such  was  the  firm  resolution,  and  Mr.  Hooker, 
trained  by  a  lifetime  of  acting  on  principle,  knew  that 
he  could  trust  himself  to  carry  it  out.     His  peace  of 

105 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

mind  returned  to  himj  his  high  brows  were  radiant, 
and  as  he  sat  at  the  Board  Meetings  and  passed  the 
accounts,  a  mysterious  smile,  as  of  a  man  who  holds 
a  happy  secret  locked  in  his  breast,  would  overspread 
his  fine  countenance.  It  is  true  that  a  great  Rolls- 
Royce  car,  of  the  most  expensive  equipment,  did, 
somehow,  make  its  appearance  j  and  a  country  house 
did,  somehow,  manage  to  get  itself  transferred  to 
Mr.  Hooker.  But  the  radiance  was  not  extinguished 
and  the  smile  was  still  there.  It  was  all  part  of  the 
Great  Moral  Plot.  It  was  all  helping  to  pack  ex- 
plosive into  the  Monster  Petard  which  was  to  hoist 
the  devil  sky-high.  The  Rolls-Royce  was  needed  to 
carry  Mr.  Hooker  to  and  fro  on  his  weekly  visits 
to  the  War  Office  or  to  his  interviews  with  the  Prime 
Minister.  The  country  house  was  needed  to  en- 
tertain the  Generals  and  the  Admirals,  the  Control- 
lers of  this  and  the  Controllers  of  that,  the  Editors 
and  the  Correspondents,  the  Lords  and  the  Ladies, 
and  all  the  gossiping  emissaries  of  chaos  who  were 
constantly  travelling  between  Smokeover  and  the 
Capital. 

So  it  went  on  till  the  summer  of  1 9 1 8  j  two  mil- 
lions of  high  explosive  had  now  been  packed  into  the 
Great  Petard,  Morally  comfortable  as  Mr.  Hooker 
had  been  all  this  time,  humanly  he  had  been  ill  at 
ease.  A  cloud  of  anxiety  for  his  three  splendid  sons, 
dearer  to  him  than  all  the  wealth  of  Ind,  nay,  than 
his  own  life,  had  constantly  overshadowed  him.  At 
first  it  was  wellnigh  intolerable,  but  use  and  wont 
had  done  their  work.  All  three  had  been  at  the 
front  from  the  beginning,  they  had  taken  part  in 
many  actions,  had  won  decorations  and  advanced  in 

106 


THE  PROFITEER 

the  Service,  so  far  not  one  of  the  three  had  received 
the  least  injury,  and  at  last  Mr.  Hooker  came  to  take 
it  for  granted  that  they  would  return  safe  and  sound. 
Then  the  lightning  fell. 

Alec,  the  second  boy,  was  the  first  to  go.  Shot 
through  both  legs  and  with  his  right  hand  blown 
oflF,  he  had  been  taken  prisoner  at  a  point  where  the 
attack  of  the  Hindenburg  line  had  temporarily  failed. 
He  was  laid  on  a  stretcher  and  was  about  to  be  taken 
to  the  rear  by  two  of  his  own  men  when  a  rain  of 
shells  from  a  British  battery  fell  upon  the  spot  and 
wiped  out  the  whole  party.  Before  Hooker  had 
recovered  from  the  first  shock  the  news  came  that 
George,  the  youngest,  was  gone.  He  had  taken  part 
in  a  bombing  raid  over  Frankfort;  his  machine,  at- 
tacked on  the  return,  had  been  disabled  and  set  on 
fire  J  and  George  had  been  burned  to  death  in  the 
air.  A  fortnight  later  Edward,  the  eldest,  was 
shattered  by  a  bomb  which  exploded  prematurely  in 
his  hand,  and  died  in  two  days  after  agonies  so  dread- 
ful that  the  doctor  who  attended  him  could  only 
speak  in  generalities.  When  Hooker  heard  this  news 
the  fountains  of  the  great  deep  were  let  loose  within 
him  and  it  seemed  to  him  that  his  heart  would  burst. 

William  Hooker  was  a  strong,  wise  man,  who  had 
long  trained  himself  to  treat  the  ordinary  shocks  and 
pains  of  life  as  a  philosopher  should.  But,  till  now, 
he  had  been  a  stranger  to  the  elemental  emotions 
which  lie  hidden,  like  chained  tempests,  in  the  "abys- 
mal deeps  of  personality";  he  had  known  nothing 
of  those  major  agonies  which  cause  the  soul  to  sweat 
as  it  were  great  drops  of  blood.  He  had  known  of 
course  that  if  his  sons  were  killed  he  would  suffer 

107 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

profoundly,  and  had  often  trembled  at  the  thought. 
But  when  the  thing  actually  happened  it  came  upon 
him  with  an  overwhelming  cruelty  of  which  his 
darkest  forebodings  had  given  him  no  hint.  His 
philosophy,  far  from  proving  an  anodyne  or  a  de- 
fence, only  served  to  light  up  the  depth  of  his  desola- 
tion and  throw  into  clearer  relief  the  general  sense- 
lessness of  the  world.  Whether  Mr.  Hooker  had 
learnt  to  contemplate  his  own  death  with  equanimity, 
as  Epicurus  teaches,  is  not  certain.  But  he  was  far 
from  equanimity  in  contemplating  the  death  of  his 
three  sons. 

And  a  horrible  thought  was  haunting  him — the 
poisoned  spear-head  of  his  self-reproaches.  That 
ill-made  bomb  that  had  killed  Edward?  What  if 
it  had  been  made  in  his  own  factory?  What  if  he 
had  made  it?  The  chances  were  even  so.  It  was  a 
Mills  bomb  that  had  killed  his  sonj  and  of  the  total 
supply  of  Mills  bombs  to  the  army  one  third  came 
from  Hooker's  firm.  Only  three  weeks  before  a 
complaint  had  been  received  from  the  War  Office 
that  some  of  the  bombs  supplied  by  Hooker  &  Co. 
were  faulty  and  had  caused  accidents.  And  the  Gov- 
ernment paid  him  seven  shillings  apiece  for  every 
one!  And  the  seven  shillings  he  had  received  for 
the  very  bomb  which  had  disembowelled  Edward 
and  blown  off  the  half  of  his  handsome  face  was  to 
be  used  for  the  promotion  of  Ethical  Culture!  O 
shameful  mockery!  O  infinite  turpitude!  "What 
loathsome  reptile,"  he  cried  aloud,  "can  compare 
with  me?  Seven  shillings!  Judas  with  your  thirty 
pieces  of  silver  I  salute  you.  Hell  itself  despises  the 
pair  of  us!" 

108 


THE  PROFITEER 

Then  it  was  that  signs  appeared  which  suggested 
to  those  who  witnessed  them  that  Mr.  Hooker  was 
losing  his  reason.  For  thirty  years  he  had  never  said 
a  prayer;  he  had  no  belief  in  the  God  to  whom  men 
pray.  But  one  day  the  butler,  entering  the  library, 
found  his  master  on  his  knees,  his  face  turned  up- 
ward and  his  hands  clasped  in  an  attitude  of  supplica- 
tion. Was  he  praying  to  God?  No,  no.  "O  Ed- 
ward, forgive  me!  O  George  and  Alec,  have  pity 
on  your  father!"  That  is  what  the  butler  heard 
him  cry. 

It  may  be  said  that  if  Mr.  Hooker  had  believed 
in  God,  and  in  His  righteous  government  of  the 
universe,  all  would  have  been  well.  Perhaps  it 
would;  but  such  might-have-beens  are  difficult  to 
appraise.  Believing  in  God  worked  differently,  in 
those  times,  with  different  people.  Some,  unques- 
tionably, it  helped  through  their  troubles.  To  others 
it  brought  a  new  trouble,  in  the  form  of  a  doubt, 
which  added  greatly  to  the  bitterness  of  their  cup 
and,  in  extreme  cases,  drove  them  mad.  Some,  who 
had  lost  their  sons  in  the  war,  lost  their  God  as  well, 
and,  feeling  that  as  the  worse  loss  of  the  two,  fer- 
vently regretted  that  they  had  ever  believed  in  God 
at  all — just  as  they  might  regret  that  they  had  ever 
begotten  and  brought  up  sons,  to  be  shot  through  the 
brain  or  die  in  agony  at  the  age  of  twenty.  Some- 
times the  troubles  yielded  to  the  belief,  and  some- 
times the  belief  yielded  to  the  troubles.  You  could 
never  tell  in  which  of  the  two  ways  belief  in  God 
was  going  to  work,  and  this  Voice  has  no  wisdom  to 
say  whether  Mr.  Hooker  would  have  belonged  to  the 
one  class  of  sufferers  or  to  the  other.    Perhaps  it  may 

109 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

be  counted  some  mitigation  of  his  lot  that  with  all 
his  manifold  distresses  he  had  no  trouble  about  God. 
But  of  kindred  trouble  he  had  plenty — about  himself, 
whom  he  despised  3  about  the  world,  which  seemed 
stupid  and  cruel  j  and  about  morality,  which  seemed 
unreal. 

Can  we  wonder,  indeed,  that  Mr.  Hooker  was  not 
able  to  talk  about  morality  and  that  it  hurt  him  to 
hear  it  talked  about?  Can  we  wonder  that  he  found 
his  home,  no  less  than  his  office,  a  dreadful  place? 
Can  we  wonder  that  he  broke  down  at  the  Committee 
of  the  Society  for  Ethical  Culture?  It  may  be 
doubted  if  there  were  on  the  earth  any  Society,  ethi- 
cal or  non-ethical,  literary,  scientific,  political  or 
philanthropic,  any  club,  place  of  worship  or  other 
visible  institution,  quite  big  enough  to  hold  Mr. 
Hooker  and  the  immensity  of  his  self-contempt.  Not 
on  the  earth,  most  assuredly. 

In  the  month  of  September  1918,  when  the  Ger- 
man resistance  was  known  to  be  yielding  and  the  end 
of  the  war  in  sight,  the  Committee  of  the  Ethical 
Society  met  to  draw  up  its  programme  for  the  coming 
session.  Thirteen  members  were  present — all  the 
committees  of  the  Society  were  large  in  proportion  to 
its  total  membership — including  the  two  Labour 
agitators,  who  had  been  persuaded  to  return  to  the 
fold,  two  professors  and  the  headmistress  of  the 
High  School  for  Girls,  Miss  Margaret  Wolfstone, 
a  fine  looking  woman  of  thirty. 

Of  Miss  Wolfstone  another  Voice  is  waiting  to 
speak.  Suffice  it  for  the  present  that  she  had  intro- 
duced the  practice  of  smoking  cigarettes  at  the  com- 

110 


THE  PROFITEER 

mittee  meetings,  a  habit  acquired  while  acting  as  a 
nurse  during  the  warj  also,  that  a  long  white  mark, 
concealed  by  a  thick  braid  of  hair,  ran  across  the 
upper  part  of  her  low,  broad  brow.  It  was  the  scar 
of  a  wound  caused  by  a  splinter  of  wood  when  she 
was  in  charge  of  the  cot-cases  on  a  hospital  ship, 
torpedoed  by  the  Germans. 

Mr.  Hooker  began  by  saying  that  he  would  pro- 
pose to  the  Committee  a  line  of  action  for  the  next 
session  different  from  that  pursued  in  the  last.  He 
doubted  if  the  Society  had  done  full  justice  to  the 
financial  expert.  Perhaps  that  gentleman  had  need- 
lessly depressed  them.  Still,  there  was  no  denying 
that  the  financial  outlook  was  extremely  dark,  and 
that  the  whole  edifice  of  Reconstruction  was  in  grave 
peril.  He  would  propose  that  for  the  next  session 
the  Society  should  confine  itself  to  the  question  of 
National  Finance,  as  the  foundation  of  reform,  and 
that  a  series  of  experts  should  be  invited  to  lecture 
upon  the  matter. 

He  had,  however,  a  more  startling,  though,  he 
believed,  a  sound  proposal  to  bring  forward.  He  had 
been  informed  that  Mr.  Arthur  Rumbelow,  who  was 
now  recovered  from  his  wounds,  had  been  giving 
close  attention  to  the  question  of  National  Finance 
during  the  period  of  his  convalescence.  In  spite  of 
Mr.  Rumbelow's  abominable  ethics,  they  all  knew 
that  he  was  a  man  of  great  intellectual  power  j  and 
he  had  heard  that  since  his  wound,  which  had  brought 
him  to  the  point  of  death,  Mr.  Rumbelow's  mind 
had  been  moving  in  new  directions  and  that  he  had 
been  greatly  softened  by  the  influence  of  his  wife. 
He  proposed  that  Mr.  Rumbelow  be  invited  to  give 

111 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

the  Inaugural  Address.  "There  will  be  an  enor- 
mous crowd  to  hear  him  and  we  shall  have  to  engage 
the  City  Hall." 

The  dismay  of  the  Committee  on  hearing  this 
proposal  was  plain  to  seej  but  Miss  Wolf  stone,  her 
two  elbows  resting  on  the  table  and  the  cigarette  held 
aloft  in  her  left  hand,  said  quietly: 

"I  support  that  proposal.  I  came  to  know  Mr. 
Rumbelow  when  he  was  a  cot-case  on  the  hospital 
ship,  and — well — to  believe  in  him."  At  which  both 
the  Labour  agitators  said,  "Hear,  hear." 

But  the  two  professors  would  have  nothing  to  do 
with  it.  One  of  them  said,  "Finance  is  outside  our 
province.  We  are  an  Ethical  Society.  Besides  which, 
if  this  proposal  is  carried,  our  work  will  be  ruined. 
My  colleague  and  I  would  resign  at  once.  To  bring 
out  a  man  of  Mr.  Rumbelow's  calling  under  the  aus- 
pices of  this  Society  would  be  a  scandal  to  morality." 

"Never  mind  about  morality,"  said  one  of  the 
agitators.    "Get  the  best  man  for  the  job." 

After  more  discussion  the  proposal  was  put  to  the 
vote,  three  voting  for  it  and  nine  against.  Mr. 
Hooker  then  said: 

"I  am  not  surprised  that  you  have  rejected  my 
proposal.  I  am  not  hurt.  Perhaps  I  ought  not  to 
have  brought  it  forward.  But  the  truth  is  that  my 
interest  in  our  work  is  not  exactly  what  it  was.  Not 
that  my  ethical  convictions  have  changed  in  the  least. 
But  the  events  of  the  war  have  taught  me  that  our 
methods  are  futile.  We  are  a  mission  to  the  con- 
verted. We  pipe,  but  nobody  dances.  The  world  is 
refractory  to  moral  teachings  such  as  we  have  to  oJBFer, 
always  has  been  so,  always  will  be  so.    What  we  are 

112 


THE  PROFITEER 

doing  has  been  attempted  a  thousand  times  before  by 
moralists  of  every  school,  but  it  has  made  little  or 
no  impression  on  the  brutishness  and  stupidity  of 
mankind.  If  it  had,  Smokeover  and  all  its  villainies 
would  never  have  come  into  existence.  Smokeover 
is  the  symbol  of  our  defeat,  which  has  been  over- 
whelming, though  we  affect  not  to  see  it.  We  do  not 
touch  the  essential  agony  of  life.  We  get  nowhere 
near  the  centre.  The  big  things  escape  us.  Mean- 
while the  Rumbelows  are  masters  of  the  situation. 
We  must  change  our  methods.  We  must  form  an 
alliance  with  them  and  all  they  stand  for.  We  must 
ask  them  to  teach  us  our  business.  Frankly  I  would 
make  friends,  yes,  friends,  with  the  mammon  of 
unrighteousness  j  though  some  of  you  will  think  I 
am  not  the  man  to  say  it.  But,  as  you  know,  the  cir- 
cumstances of  my  life  have  greatly  changed," 

Here  the  poor  man,  who  had  made  an  effort  to 
control  himself,  broke  down  completely,  bowed  his 
head  in  the  fold  of  the  arm  which  lay  on  the  table, 
and  sobbed  aloud.  Miss  Wolfstone  went  up  to  him 
and  putting  her  hand  on  his  shoulder  said,  "Let  me 
go  home  with  you,  Mr.  Hooker." 

"No,"  he  answered,  recovering  himself,  "I  must 
finish  v/hat  I  had  to  say.  I  can't  explain,  but  those 
of  you  who  have  been  hard  hit  like  myself,  and  I 
know  that  some  of  you  have,  will  understand.  I 
can  no  longer  talk  about  morality  j  I  can  no  longer 
bear  to  hear  it  talked  of  by  others.  It  hurts  me:  it 
hurts  me  cruelly.  It  gives  me  a  horrible  sense  that 
I  am  in  a  world  of  dismal  unreality.  I  must  cease 
to  be  your  President,    That  is  all," 

And  with  that  he  got  up,  shook  hands  with  the  two 

113 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

professors   who    had   opposed   him,   and   left    the 
room. 

When  he  was  gone  all  tongues  were  loosened  ex- 
cept Miss  Wolfstone's.  She  remained  silent,  listen- 
ing to  the  others.  "He's  not  the  man  he  was."  "I 
fear  his  mind  is  becoming  unhinged,  like  his  wife's." 
"His  breaking  down  was  a  bad  sign."  "His  proposal 
about  Rumbelow  was  a  worse."  "It  is  better  that  he 
should  resign."  "He  was  never  really  rooted  in 
philosophy — always  seemed  to  me  to  be  preaching." 
"What  has  upset  him  is  not  so  much  the  death  of 
his  sons  as  the  money  he  has  made  out  of  the  war." 
This  was  the  talk. 

When  Miss  Wolfstone  went  out  she  found 
Hooker  on  the  steps,  toying  with  the  brim  of  his 
hat  and  looking  vaguely  up  and  down  the  street. 

"Where  are  you  going?"    she  asked. 

"I  don't  know.  I  don't  know  which  way  to  turn. 
If  I  go  up  the  street  I  go  towards  my  office.  If  I 
go  down  the  street  I  get  nearer  to  my  home.  Both 
are  dreadful  places.  For  pity's  sake,  my  dear  lady, 
take  me  somewhere." 

She  linked  her  arm  in  his,  drew  him  to  a  taxi- 
stand  and  bade  the  driver  take  him  to  his  home. 


114 


CHAPTER  THREE 

Mr.  Hooker's  Advisers 

TV/jTR.  HOOKER'S  advisers  were  importunate, 
■^^■^  numerous  and  discordant.  Every  post 
brought  him  a  heterogeneous  pile  of  begging  letters, 
genuine  and  fraudulent,  pathetic,  tragic,  comic,  cun- 
ning, stupid,  modest  and  impudent.  Some  pleaded 
broken  hearts,  some  threatened  blackmail.  Some  ad- 
dressed him  in  fawning  tones  as  a  benefactor  sent 
from  heaven ;  some  told  him  plainly  that  he  was  the 
blackest  of  villains.  In  the  course  of  a  single  day 
he  received  ninety-four  requests  for  subscriptions  to 
public  objects.  All  gave  him,  either  openly  or  by 
implication,  what  the  writers  considered  good  advice. 
Had  Mr.  Hooker  yielded  to  what  this  crowd  of 
applicants  demanded  his  millions  would  soon  have 
been  dissipated j  in  which  event,  no  doubt,  the  advice 
given  him  by  a  cynical  correspondent  that  he  should 
"destroy  his  wealth"  as  the  safest  thing  he  could  do, 
would  have  been  in  large  measure  carried  out.  If 
Mr.  Hooker  himself  could  not  be  justly  accused  of 
cupidity,  his  vast  wealth  having  been  thrust  upon  him 
by  the  force  of  circumstances,  he  was  certainly  an 
active  cause  of  cupidity  in  other  people. 

All  Smokeover  hummed  with  the  question,  "What 
will  Mr.  Hooker  do  with  his  money?"    It  competed 

115 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

with  the  League  of  Nations  and  with  the  Great 
Divorce  Case  as  the  chief  topic  of  public  interest. 
Working  men  shouted  it  to  one  another  as  they  raced 
home  on  their  bicycles  at  five  o'clock.  In  crowded 
assemblies,  where  torture  was  being  endured  under 
the  guise  of  hospitality,  people  in  evening  dress 
screamed  it  into  each  other's  ears,  or  breathed  it  into 
each  other's  mouths.  It  made  the  week-end  house 
parties  more  than  usually  piquant  j  Cabinet  Ministers 
might  be  heard  discussing  it  at  dinner  with  be- 
jewelled women,  dressed,  or  undressed,  in  the  last 
creations  from  Paris.  It  invaded  the  Common 
Rooms  of  our  ancient  Universities,  where  many 
bottles  of  generous  port  were  consumed  without  any 
conclusion  coming  in  sight.  A  question  was  raised 
about  it  in  the  House,  and  the  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer was  asked  by  the  Labour  Party  what  action 
he  meant  to  take:  he  said  the  matter  was  occupying 
the  attention  of  his  department.  Women  gossiped 
and  agitators  thundered.  In  clubs,  in  drawing  rooms, 
in  railway  carriages,  at  the  church  door,  and  some- 
times, sotto  voce,  in  church  itself,  the  question  ran 
and  spread  and  diffused  itself,  like  an  epidemic. 
Once,  if  report  speaks  true,  it  was  debated  for  more 
than  an  hour  by  four  persons  dressed  in  deep  black, 
as  they  sat  in  a  mourning  coach  which  was  following 
the  hearse  at  a  snail's  pace  to  a  cemetery  five  miles 
oflF.  Boredom  found  it  a  relaxation  and  grief  an 
anodyne. 

But  neither  in  the  mourning  coach  nor  anywhere 
else  was  interest  in  the  question  quite  so  keen  as  the 
meetings  of  the  Smokeover  Branch  of  the  Society 
for  Ethical  Culture. 

116 


MR.  HOOKER'S  ADVISERS 

So  far  as  the  members  knew,  nothing  of  the  kind 
had  previously  occurred  in  the  history  of  the  Ethical 
Movement,  and  they  foresaw  that  the  event  would 
have  a  profound  effect  on  its  fortunes.  If  Hooker 
turned  traitor  to  the  cause  and  became  a  vulgar 
plutocrat,  as  some  said  he  would,  the  whole  move- 
ment would  be  discredited  and  set  back.  If  on  the 
other  hand  he  remained  true  to  his  principles,  con- 
sulting his  conscience,  acting  from  the  highest 
motives,  and  applying  the  Moral  Will  to  the  dis- 
position of  his  money  J  if,  in  a  word,  he  used  the 
whole  of  it  to  promote  the  Ethical  Revival  which 
was  so  long  overdue,  what  might  one  not  see?  In 
spite  of  their  preliminary  doubts  and  of  appear- 
ances to  the  contrary,  it  was  generally  conceded  that 
Hooker  would  use  his  money  for  "doing  good"j  or 
at  least  for  Reconstruction.  But  what  good  would 
he  do?  What  would  he  reconstruct?  That  was 
the   question. 

The  Society  felt  that  the  question,  involving  as 
it  did,  a  great  ethical  problem,  was  one  on  which  it 
ought  to  make  a  definite  pronouncement  j  and  so 
absorbing  did  the  interest  become  that  for  the  time 
being  the  members  could  hardly  concentrate  their 
attention  on  anything  else.  Little  by  little  the  weekly 
discussions  grew  shorter  j  the  definitions  of  the  Su- 
preme Good  more  perfunctory  j  the  relations  of  the 
Individual  to  the  Social  Whole  more  hastily  sketched. 
Even  the  more  contentious  members  of  the  group, 
who  formed  the  majority,  began  to  refrain  from 
making  speeches.  The  truth  was  that  they  were  all 
looking  forward  to  the  moment  when,  the  meeting 
over,  they  would  retire  to  the  tea-shop  over  the  way 

117 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

and  interchange  ideas  on  "what  Mr.  Hooker  would 
do  with  his  money." 

On  one  occasion  the  Committee  on  Practical 
Applications  was  meeting  in  the  dingy  little 
room  at  the  back  of  the  Hallj  Professor  Giles, 
the  psychologist,  was  in  the  chair  j  and  the  first 
topic  on  the  agenda  was  "Action  of  the  Society 
in  regard  to  the  League  of  Nations."  The  pro- 
gramme of  action  was  rapidly  drawn  up  and 
adopted  almost  without  argument.  "And  now," 
said  a  member,  "the  next  step  will  be  to  approach 
Mr.  Hooker  for  a  large  donation  to  the  League 
Propaganda  Fund." 

"You  forget,"  said  another,  "that  Mr.  Hooker  Is 
losing  faith  in  Reconstruction." 

"Yes,"  said  the  Chairman,  pushing  his  agenda 
aside,  "and  that  raises  the  whole  question  of  what 
he  is  going  to  do  with  his  money.  The  more  I  think 
of  it  the  more  convinced  I  am  that  he  is  in  an  im- 
possible position.  If  Hooker  were  an  ordinary  man 
of  business  we  all  know  what  he  would  do.  He 
would  do  like  all  the  rest.  Perhaps  a  little  better, 
but  essentially  the  same.  But  he  is  not  an  ordinary 
man  of  business.  Handling  money  is  not  his  line. 
He  is  a  student,  a  thinker,  and  a  man  with  an  ex- 
traordinarily sensitive  conscience.  He  knows  too 
much  about  ethics  to  be  able  to  make  up  his  mind  in 
a  matter  of  such  complexity.  He  will  be  another 
Hamlet.  It  would  not  surprise  me  in  the  least  if 
he  were  to  commit  suicide.  Besides,  the  deaths  of  his 
three  sons  have  broken  him,  and  I  hear  terrible 
stories  about  his  wife." 

"I  hope,"  said  one  of  the  working  men,  "that  he 

118 


MR.  HOOKER'S  ADVISERS 

will  pull  down  the  east  end  of  the  town  and  rebuild 
it." 

"I  wonder,  Giles,"  said  Professor  Smith — his  sub- 
ject was  History — "I  wonder  what  you  would  do, 
if  you  were  placed  in  a  similar  position." 

"Put  that  question  to  yourself,"  snapped  the  psy- 
chologist, "and  mind  you  answer  it." 

"If  the  money  were  mine,"  said  the  dentist,  "I 
should  give  the  whole  of  it  for  the  alleviation  of 
physical  pain,  which  is  the  only  real  evil  in  the  uni- 
verse." 

"I  know  what  /  should  do,"  said  the  designer  of 
women's  frocks.     "I  should  go  to  the  dogs." 

"I  suspect  that  a  good  many  of  us  would  do  that," 
interposed  the  Warden  of  the  Women's  Settlement} 
though  what  precisely  she  meant  was  not  clear,  for 
she  was  seventy  years  of  age. 

Here  Miss  Wolfstone  blew  a  ring  of  smoke.  "For 
my  part,"  she  said,  "I  should  do  an  infinite  number 
of  things.    All  of  them  quite  small." 

"I  wish,"  said  a  gentleman  with  a  red  tie,  "that 
Hooker  would  hand  the  money  over  to  me." 

"Then  we  should  see  something  bigy''  said  Miss 
Wolfstone. 

"Yes,  and  you'd  soon  find  out  what  it  was.  We 
should  want  your  school  as  a  hospital  for  the 
wounded."    This  was  spoken  with  some  asperity. 

"I  think,"  said  the  Professor  of  Ethics,  "we  ought 
to  appoint  a  special  sub-committee  to  deal  with  the 
question  and  draw  up  a  joint  resolution  to  be  sub- 
mitted to  Mr.  Hooker  in  the  name  of  the  Society. 
It  is  a  matter  on  which  the  Society  ought  to  speak 
with  united  voice." 

119 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

"Had  we  not  better  ask  Mr.  Hooker  first  whether 
our  advice  would  be  welcome  to  him?"  asked  Miss 
Wolfstone. 

"Welcome  or  not,  it  ought  to  be  given,"  said  the 
Professor. 

"But  do  you  think  we  should  agree?" 

"The  issue  is  perfectly  simple,"  said  the  Professor 
— his  name  was  Pawkins — "unless  we  can  agree  on 
a  plain  practical  matter  of  this  kind  what  prospect 
is  there  of  our  agreeing  about  anything?" 

"None,"  said  the  designer  of  women's  frocks. 
"All  the  same  we  shall  not  agree  about  this." 

After  further  discussion  the  idea  of  a  joint  resolu- 
tion was  abandoned.  Professor  Pawkins,  defeated 
on  this  point,  but  still  insistent  on  the  "duty"  of  the 
Society,  now  suggested  that  the  members  of  the 
Committee  should  write  as  individuals  to  Mr. 
Hooker,  leaving  him  to  infer  the  general  trend  of 
the  Society's  judgment  from  the  separate  opinions. 
In  any  event  he  intended  to  do  so  himself.  This 
led  to  further  dissensions.  Miss  Wolfstone  affirming 
that  she,  for  her  part,  would  not  write  to  Mr.  Hooker 
unless  he  definitely  asked  for  her  advice.  Finally 
an  understanding  was  reached  to  send  him  a  care- 
fully worded  letter  inquiring  whether.  In  view  of 
his  long  connection  with  the  Society,  he  would  be 
willing  to  receive  individual  opinions  from  the  mem- 
bers on  a  matter  so  nearly  concerning  himself  and 
them. 

A  week  later  It  was  reported  to  the  Committee  that 
Mr.  Hooker  had  written  a  letter  of  thanks  to  the 
Secretary  for  the  kind  Interest  the  Society  had  shown 
in  his  affairs,  and  said  that,  far  from  taking  it  amiss, 

120 


MR.  HOOKER'S  ADVISERS 

he  would  be  profoundly  grateful  to  any  member  of 
the  Committee  who  could  throw  the  least  light  on 
the  very  difficult  position  in  which  he  found  him- 
self. 

In  the  month  that  followed  Mr.  Hooker  received 
at  intervals  a  dozen  letters  in  all.  The  following 
are  summaries  of  the  most  important.  Let  us  take 
the  Professors'  first. 

Professor  Giles  wrote  that  he  realized  the  diffi- 
culty in  which  Mr.  Hooker  was  placed.  But  to  put 
himself  in  Mr.  Hooker's  position  was  a  psychological 
impossibility.  Then  followed  a  long  explanation 
of  why  this  was  so.  In  the  last  paragraph  he  advised 
the  millionaire  to  do  nothing  definite  for  the  present  j 
to  take  his  timej  to  watch  the  course  of  events 
and  to  act  only  when  ripe  reflection  coincided 
with  clear  opportunity.  He  added,  that  times  of 
confusion  like  the  present  were  not  favourable  to 
men  who  had  far-reaching  decisions  to  make. 
"Wait  therefore  till  the  atmosphere  has  cleared. 
The  things  that  are  clamouring  most  loudly  for 
money  now  are  not  those  that  will  need  it  most 
three  years  hence." 

Mr.  Hooker  thought  it  a  sensible  letter,  but 
wondered  how  long  it  would  be  before  "ripe  re- 
flection coincided  with  clear  opportunity,"  and 
whether  he  would  be  able  to  recognize  the  exact 
moment  when  it  came. 

Professor  Marchbanks,  the  Economist,  wanted  to 
know  in  what  capacity  he  was  expected  to  speak.  If 
as  a  Political  Economist,  he  would  gladly  give  his 
opinion  as  to  the  economic  consequences  of  any  course 
of  action  Mr.  Hooker  might  choose  for  himself,  but 

121 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

he  would  not  take  the  responsibility  of  guiding  his 
conscience. 

Professor  Smith,  of  the  History  Department, 
plumped  for  a  large  endowment  of  Eugenics. 

Professor  Pawkins  wrote  a  letter  of  sixteen  pages, 
which  meant,  when  reduced  to  its  essence,  that  he 
didn't  know  what  ought  to  be  done.  He  developed 
twelve  hypothetical  methods  of  dealing  with  the 
money,  and  invited  Mr.  Hooker  to  balance  their 
respective  advantages.  On  the  whole  he  was  in- 
clined to  think  that  the  question  was  one  of  casuistry, 
which,  he  said,  was  a  dangerous  subject. 

The  designer  of  women's  frocks  came  next.  His 
vein  was  light-hearted  and  a  trifle  impertinent — for 
the  designer,  in  spite  of  his  long  association  with  the 
Ethical  Movement,  was  not,  it  must  be  confessed, 
exactly  a  gentleman.  He  said  he  was  very  sorry  for 
Mr.  Hooker  i  that,  obviously,  the  sum  of  money  in 
question  was  much  too  large  for  any  one  man  to 
handle,  and  that  it  ought  to  be  broken  up.  He  sug- 
gested, therefore,  that  it  should  be  distributed  in 
twelve  equal  portions  among  the  members  of  the 
Committee,  each  of  whom  would  then  be  left 
responsible  for  its  right  application.  And  he 
added  some  rather  good  remarks  on  the  duty  of 
distributing  excessive  responsibilities,  reminding 
Mr.  Hooker,  jocosely,  of  a  lecture  he  had  once 
given  on  the  subject.  This  was  the  smartest  reply 
Mr.  Hooker  received,  but  it  was  also  the  most 
unkind. 

The  Warden  of  the  Women's  Settlement,  who 
was  a  disciple  of  Herbert  Spencer,  said  that  Mr. 
Hooker's  duty  was  perfectly  clear  and  simple.    He 

122 


MR.  HOOKER'S  ADVISERS 

must  devote  the  money,  without  reserve,  to  promot- 
ing Altruistic  Evolution. 

The  dentist  implored  Mr.  Hooker  not  to  disperse 
his  benefactions,  but  to  concentrate  on  a  single  point, 
perhaps  a  minute  one,  and  strike  a  telling  blow.  He 
instanced  physical  pain.  If  Mr.  Hooker  preferred 
Hospitals,  rather  than  Anaesthetics  pure  and  simple, 
he  knew  of  many  that  were  in  need  of  funds  j  and 
he  wrote  out  a  long  list  of  them. 

The  two  labour  agitators  were  brief  and  precise. 
They  said,  in  terms  so  nearly  identical  as  to  suggest 
collaboration,  that  if  they  were  in  Mr.  Hooker's 
position  they  would  hand  over  the  millions  to  the 
strike  chests  of  the  Trades  Unions. 

The  radical  lawyer  told  Mr.  Hooker  that  he  had 
a  chance  to  do  the  biggest  thing  of  his  time.  Let 
him  devote  his  fortune  to  the  revival  of  the  Old 
Liberal  Party,  with  Peace  and  Retrenchment  for  its 
motto.  "Start  a  first-class  Liberal  newspaper  with 
ample  funds  in  every  large  town.  Get  Asquith  back 
and  send  Lloyd  George  and  his  practitioners  to  the 
rightabout." 

One  of  the  working-men,  not  an  agitator,  sug- 
gested the  foundation  of  "a  Moral  College  for 
Labour."  That,  he  said,  had  been  his  dream  for 
many  years,  and  he  only  wished  he  were  in  Mr. 
Hooker's  shoes. 

Four  of  the  letters  came  from  the  obsessed.  One 
said  that  he  would  give  every  penny  of  the  money  to 
the  suppression  of  vivisection  j  the  second  that  he 
would  do  the  same  for  launching  Prohibition  propa- 
ganda on  an  enormous  scale.  The  third  proposed 
a  colossal  foundation  for  enabling  bereaved  persons 

123 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

to  get  into  communication  with  the  departed.  Mr. 
Whistlefield,,  the  Champion  of  the  Simple  Life, 
counselled  the  millionaire  to  buy  up  agricultural  land 
and  cultivate  oats,  which,  he  said,  eaten  dry,  were  the 
finest  brain  food  in  the  world  and  highly  conductive 
to  moral  elevation. 

Miss  Wolf  stone  wrote  as  follows: 

"My  dear  Mr.  Hooker, 

"I  have  no  true  place  in  the  Ethical  Society  now 
that  you  are  going.     I  shall  leave  with  you. 

"I  joined  it,  for  reasons  that  you  can  imagine, 
when  I  was  groping,  before  the  war.  It  was  no  light 
burden  that  I  carried.  But  one  and  another  would 
dose  me  with  what  they  called  ^salvation  by  char- 
acter'— a  shallow  and  profane  conception,  which  I 
abhor.    It  hurt  me  cruelly. 

"But  I  stayed  on.  Why?  Because  in  the  first 
place  I  was  strongly  attracted  by  the  ideas  you  were 
continually  enforcing.  Then,  from  the  time  when 
the  Ministry  of  Munitions  requisitioned  your  works, 
I  foresaw  that  a  tragedy  would  overtake  you,  and  I 
wished  to  be  there  when  the  blow  fell.  For  the  rest 
there  was  a  fascination  in  studying  those  queer  types 
of  character,  so  different  from  one  another,  which 
formed  our  little  band,  I  myself  being  probably  the 
queerest  of  the  lot.  All  this  was  a  woman's  weak- 
ness, and  I  confess  that  I  succumbed  to  it.  But  it 
has  taught  me  much. 

"May  I  beg  you  to  leave  the  atmosphere  of  the 
Society,  to  take  yourself  out  of  it  altogether?  The 
members,  excellent  people  as  they  are,  cannot  help 
you.    They  will  merely  pester  you  with  generalities 

124 


MR.  HOOKER'S  ADVISERS 

and  so  leave  you  more  bewildered  than  ever.  Your 
problem  is  far  out  of  their  range.  They  think  it  is 
easy.  It  is,  as  you  know  well,  immensely  difficult. 
"One  of  the  bitterest  trials  you  have  to  encounter 
is  that  you  will  be  driven,  in  spite  of  yourself,  to 
suspect  the  motives  of  everyone  who  approaches  you 
— you,  who  have  trained  yourself  for  years  to  think 
evil  of  no  man.  Fearing  that  they  would  be  sus- 
pected, those  who  could  help  you  most  will  keep 
aloof  from  youj  and  that  will  increase  your  loneli- 
ness, and  leave  you  exposed  to  sycophants,  conspira- 
tors and  toadies.  I  hardly  dare  approach  you  myself. 
Every  word  in  this  letter  is  open  to  misconstruction — 
and  would  be  instantly  misconstrued  by  a  censorious 
world.  But  you  and  I  know  one  another  pretty  well, 
and  I  take  my  risk." 

There  remained  two  more  letters.  Both  came 
from  outsiders  J  which  showed  that  the  members  of 
the  Committee  on  Applications  had  been  talking 
more  freely  than  they  ought.  The  first  was  signed 
"Cynic,"  and  ran  thus: 

"My  dear  Man, 

"Your  problem  is  insoluble,  and  the  sooner  you 
recognize  this  the  better.  There  is  no  mode  of  dis- 
posing of  this  money  that  will  not  do  more  harm 
than  good.  Whatever  you  do  with  it,  you  will  wish 
you  had  done  something  else,  and  you  will  be  right. 
It  is  essentially  a  poison.  Don't  flatter  yourself  that 
you  are  going  to  promote  the  good  of  society,  for 
there  is  no  good  in  society  as  it  now  exists  that  is 
worth  promoting.  Damn  society.  It  is  the  mother 
of  quarrels — societas  mater  discordiarum.     Leave  it 

125 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

to  quarrel  itself  to  death,  as  it  soon  will,  and  as  your 
money,  dispose  of  it  as  you  may,  will  help  it  to  do. 
Therefore  I  counsel  you  to  destroy  all  this  wealth. 
Destroy  it,  Hooker  j  wipe  it  out  of  existence  as  soon 
as  you  can !  Don't  give  it,  don't  leave  it  to  anybody ! 
Above  all  don't  spend  it  on  yourself.  Destroy  it, 
destroy  it,  and  again  I  say,  destroy  it!  You  will  find 
that  no  easy  thing  to  do.  But  write  to  me,  Poste 
Restante,  Southampton  Row,  London,  and  I  will  tell 
you  how,  without  doing  harm  to  anybody,  you  can 
make  this  wealth  to  be  as  though  it  had  never  been. 
I  am  an  expert  in  the  destruction  of  wealth." 

The  last  letter  to  arrive  was  written  in  a  school- 
boy's hand.  Looking  at  the  address  Hooker  recog- 
nized the  handwriting  of  his  little  friend,  Billie 
Smith,  son  of  Professor  Smith,  one  of  his  pupils  in 
the  Moral  Education  Class. 

"Dear  Mr.  Hooker, 

"I  heard  Father  tell  Mother  last  night  that  you 
didn't  know  what  to  do  with  all  your  money.  Ted 
and  I  talked  about  it  in  bed  till  half-past  twelve  and 
made  a  plan  and  got  an  awful  rowing  from  Father 
this  morning  for  not  going  to  sleep.  We  want  you 
please  sir  to  bury  the  money  in  an  island  under  a 
palm  tree  and  make  one  of  those  funny  maps  with  the 
murdered  man's  blood,  and  don't  forget  to  put  the 
skeleton  on  the  top  of  the  chest  bearing  two  points 
North  by  East  from  the  ship  so  that  we  shall  know 
exactly  where  it  is.  Then  Ted  and  I  are  going  to  be 
pirates  and  wc  will  find  the  treasure  and  do  lots  of 
good  with  it  and  make  all  the  poor  people  happy. 
Oh  do  please  sir  it  will  be  such  fun  and  you  can  have 

126 


MR.  HOOKER'S  ADVISERS 

as  much  of  the  money  back  as  you  like  when  we  get 

it  and  then  we  can  write  a  book  and  you  shall  be  the 

man  with  a  wooden  leg  and  one  eye.     We  promise 

to  do  right  sir  Ted  is  such  a  good  boy  and  I  am  not  a 

cruel  one  and  follow  our  consciences  just  as  you  said 

we  ought  when  you  used  to  take  us  in  the  Moral  Class 

and  we  won't  kill  anybody  unless  it  is  in  self  defence 

and  we'll  spare  all  the  passengers  and  be  ever  so 

polite  to  the  ladies  and  allow  no  bad  language  and 

make  anybody  walk  the  plank  that  tells  lies.     Oh 

do  please,  we  both  promise.    You  are  always  so  kind 

to  boys.     Our  cat  had  seven  kittens  yesterday  and 

one  has  no  tail.  ^/v       i     •      r  •     j 

"Your  lovmg  inend, 

"BiLLiE  Smith. 

"P.S. — We  think  Socrates  and  Buddha  would  be 
ever  so  pleased  if  you  do  what  we  say. 

"P.S. — You  needn't  murder  the  man  unless  you 
like.  He  might  fall  from  the  masthead  or  some- 
thing like  that  which  would  make  him  bloody." 

The  effect  of  these  letters  on  the  mind  of  Mr. 
Hooker  was  fourfold:  first,  to  cause  him  to  remember 
that  Billie  Smith's  birthday  occurred  next  week,  and 
to  order  a  microscope  to  be  delivered  at  Billie's  ad- 
dress on  the  morning  of  the  great  day;  second,  to 
raise  his  high  regard  for  Miss  Wolfstone,  whom  he 
resolved  to  take  more  fully  into  his  confidence;  third, 
to  increase  his  antipathy  to  meddlesome  moralists; 
fourth,  to  convince  him  that  if  his  problem  were  ever 
solved  at  all  it  would  have  to  be  solved  by  himself 
and  by  nobody  else.  The  solution,  he  saw,  would 
never  be  found.  It  must  be  created^  and,  save  him- 
self, there  was  no  man  living  who  could  create  it. 

127 


CHAPTER  FOUR 

The  Mad  Millionaire  Has  a  Near  Shave 

THE  impression  left  by  Mr.  Hooker,  at  this  time, 
on  the  minds  of  those  who  knew  him  was  that 
of  a  "broken"  man.  Many  of  them  fell  into  the 
habit  of  referring  to  him  as  "poor  Hooker!"  some- 
times checking  themselves  as  though  the  adjective 
were  not  appropriate,  but  inevitably  recurring  to  it 
later  on.  His  co-directors  found  his  presence  at  the 
weekly  Board  meetings  troublesome  and  dangerous. 
He  would  constantly  intervene  with  some  high- 
flown  proposal  which  was  not  "business"  3  he  would 
press  it  with  obstinacy  and  pour  out  moral  indigna- 
tion on  any  who  opposed  him.  On  one  occasion  he 
told  the  Board  to  its  face  that  it  was  "a  den  of 
thieves"  j  on  another  he  invoked  the  fate  of  Sodom 
and  Gomorrah  on  the  whole  undertaking.  They 
agreed  that  he  was  impossible,  and  must  be  got  out 
of  the  Chair  at  all  costs.  They  implored  him  to  go 
away  "for  a  long  rest"j  one  of  them  offered  the  use 
of  his  villa  on  the  Riviera — which  suggestion  was  ill- 
received.  They  wrote  to  Mr.  Polycarp,  solicitor  to 
the  Firm,  urging  him  to  use  his  influence  and  if 
necessary  to  "take  steps." 

The  Ethical  Society  was  emphatic  in  the  same 
sense.  "Poor  Hooker,"  said  Professor  Giles,  "is 
<"v'^?if  for.     As  a  moral  force  he  may  be  written  oflF. 

128 


THE  MAD  MILLIONAIRE 

Yesterday  he  stopped  me  in  the  street  and  said,  with 
the  strangest  manner,  ^Giles,  when  is  that  talking 
shop  of  yours  going  to  put  up  its  shutters?'  I'm 
afraid  he  will  discredit  the  Movement." 

His  domestics  had  no  doubt  about  the  matter. 
Said  Robert,  the  butler,  to  Jenkins,  the  chauffeur, 
"Between  you  and  me,  Jenk,  the  old  man's  goin' 
dotty.  I  told  you  about  me  catchin'  him  sayin'  his 
prayers.  Well,  this  morning  at  breakfast  blowed  if 
he  didn't  empty  his  coffee  into  his  porridge  plate  and 
eat  it  with  a  spoon." 

"And  I'll  tell  you  a  worse  thing  than  that,"  said 
Jenkins.  "He's  taken  against  petrol.  Smells  it 
everywhere !  He's  always  stopping  the  Rolls-Royce 
and  saying  there's  something  wrong  with  the  car. 
When  we  were  in  London  yesterday  he  calls  through 
the  speakin'  tube  and  says,  ^Jenkins,'  says  he,  ^what's 
wrong  with  the  car?'  Right  in  the  middle  of  the 
traffic  it  was.  So  I  pulls  up  and  I  says,  'Nothing, 
sir.'  4t  stinks  of  burnt  petrol,'  says  he.  *It  comes 
from  these  'ere  motor  buses,'  says  I.  4t's  the  char- 
acteristic odour  of  civilization,  and  I  hate  it,'  says  he 
— them  were  his  very  words.  I  tell  you  the  old 
man's  breaking  up.     And  a  good  'eart,  too." 

And  what  did  Mr.  Polycarp,  the  lawyer,  think? 
Mr.  Polycarp,  whose  office  in  Bedford  Row  was 
panelled  with  black  boxes  bearing  on  their  outsides 
the  legend  "Hooker  &  Co.,"  or  "William  Hooker, 
Esq""^,"  thought  it  a  very  bad  business  and  anticipated 
serious  trouble.  For  Mr.  Hooker,  having  shaken 
off  the  dust  of  his  feet  against  the  Ethical  Society, 
had  determined  to  make  a  new  Will,  but  without 
any  clear  plan,  or  notion  how  to  make  it.     Two  or 

129 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

three  times  a  week  the  agitated  millionaire  would 
fly  up  to  London  on  this  errand  with  proposals  which 
Mr.  Polycarp  could  not  understand,  still  less  apply. 
For  example,  he  would  commission  the  lawyer  to 
draw  up  a  Will  "for  the  general  purpose  of  financ- 
ing the  Moral  Ideal,"  and  then  ask  if  it  would  be 
ready  next  week.  Or  he  would  launch  into  Kant's 
doctrine  of  the  "Good  Will,"  and  tell  Mr.  Polycarp 
to  make  one.  Or  he  would  break  out  into  invectives 
against  the  State,  which,  he  said,  was  an  immoral  in- 
stitution and  the  perpetrator  of  innumerable  crimes 
against  its  subjects,  and  implore  Mr.  Polycarp  to  save 
his  wealth  from  the  predatory  designs  of  "the  Great 
Leviathan."  The  lawyer  interpreted  all  this  as 
evidence  of  mental  disarray,  and  when  his  client  left 
the  office  he  would  find  himself  at  his  wits'  end  and 
fling  himself  back  in  his  chair.  Then,  after  ejaculat- 
ing "Poor  Hooker!"  several  times,  he  would  put  his 
mouth  to  the  speaking  tube  and  call  to  his  managing 
clerk: 

"If  Mr.  Hooker  should  come  in  when  I  am  out, 
see  that  he  transacts  no  business  and  does  not  commit 
himself  in  any  way." 

Most  assuredly  the  millionaire  was  "breaking  up." 
And  the  humour  of  it  increased  the  curiosity  of  the 
public  as  to  what  would  become  of  his  vast  acquisi- 
tions— a  curiosity  which  reflected  the  bewilderment 
of  the  millionaire  himself. 

But  the  breaking  up  process  had  gone  deeper  than 
the  gossips  were  aware  of,  or  than  Mr.  Polycarp 
could  divine.  It  had  penetrated  to  the  hidden  foun- 
dations of  Mr.  Hooker's  orderly  life,  and,  shatter- 
ing these,  had  let  loose  the  imprisoned  forces  from 

130 


THE  MAD  MILLIONAIRE 

below,  things  as  yet  without  form,  which  later  on 
would  grow  accustomed  to  the  light  and  clothe  them- 
selves in  ideas.  There  was  confusion,  of  course,  but 
through  it  all  something  definite,  though  dimly- 
apprehended,  was  struggling  for  expression,  and  Mr. 
Hooker,  baffled  by  the  half-formed  thought  within 
him,  was  turning  to  this  friend  and  that,  in  a  vain 
appeal  for  the  liberating  word. 

After  one  of  these  interviews  at  his  lawyer's  office, 
Mr.  Hooker  found  himself  awaiting  his  return  train 
at  a  London  terminus.  The  platform  was  crowded 
with  soldiers  returning  from  the  occupied  territories. 
One  group  in  particular  caught  his  attention.  It  was 
gathered  round  a  tall  man  in  civilian  clothes  and 
appeared  to  be  engaged  in  eager  discussion. 

Mr.  Hooker  went  forward,  and  finding  a  first-class 
compartment  empty  took  his  seat,  lit  a  cigar  and  fell 
into  a  deep  introspection.  As  he  mused  the  confusion 
seemed  to  abate j  the  thoughts  that  jostled  in  his 
mind  lost  their  sharp  edges  j  anxiety  vanished  and  a 
profound  calm  descended  upon  his  troubled  spirit. 

Suddenly  he  was  startled  from  his  reverie  by 
hearing,  or  seeming  to  hear,  the  strains  of  a  melody, 
extraordinarily  sweet  and  penetrating,  coming  from 
somewhere  above  his  head,  and  accompained  by  the 
patter  of  light  feet  and  the  sound  of  laughing  voices. 
It  lasted  for  several  minutes  and  then  abruptly 
ceased. 

He  sprang  from  his  seat  and  called  to  the  guard, 
who  was  passing  the  window: 

"Guard,"  he  said,  "where  did  that  music  come 
from?" 

131 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

"What  music,  sir?"  said  the  guard. 

"I  distinctly  heard  music  and  dancing  a  moment 
ago." 

The  man  shook  his  head,  and  Hooker,  greatly 
wondering,  went  back  to  his  corner.  Had  he  been 
asleep  and  dreaming?  Or  was  it  some  frolic  of  the 
soldiers  on  the  platform?  He  never  knew.  A 
moment  later  the  whistle  was  blown  for  departure. 

The  train  was  already  on  the  move  when  the  guard, 
running  along  the  platform,  flung  open  the  door  and 
thrust  into  the  carriage  the  tall  civilian  whom  Hooker 
had  seen  surrounded  by  soldiers. 

"Thank  you,  guard,"  cried  the  man.  "See  me  at 
the  other  end.     Is  the  lady  in?" 

"Yes,  sir,"  shouted  the  guard,  "in  the  next  coach 
forward." 

It  was  Rumbelow.  Occupied  for  a  moment  in 
arranging  some  packages  on  the  rack  he  did  not  notice 
his  companion  5  but  Hooker  had  recognized  him  at 
once,  and  had  time  to  study  him. 

The  bookmaker  was  a  man  in  the  prime  of  life. 
There  was  nothing  in  his  appearance  to  reveal  his 
calling  or  to  suggest  a  monster  or  a  shark.  On  the 
contrary,  he  had  the  air  of  a  prince  and  a  soldier  j 
his  features  were  strongly  marked,  but  open:  the  eye 
clear  and  of  a  deep  blue,  the  nose  finely  cut  and  very 
long,  the  ear  small,  the  hand  white,  delicate  and 
long  fingered.  If  there  was  anything  saturnine  about 
the  face  it  was  in  the  mouth,  the  corners  of  which 
were  slightly  drawn  down. 

Rumbelow  turned  round.  "Mr.  Hooker,  I  be- 
lieve," he  said.  "I  am  glad  to  see  you  about  again, 
sir.    We  heard  you  were  ill." 

132 


THE  MAD  MILLIONAIRE 

Mr.  Hooker  extended  his  hand,  and  Rumbelow, 
who  seemed  for  a  moment  surprised,  returned  the 
grasp. 

"It  was  kind  of  you,"  said  Hooker,  "to  make  in- 
quiries about  me  the  other  day.  I  was  touched  by 
it.  Indeed  I  went  so  far  as  to  write  to  you  last  night 
hoping  that  you  and  Mrs.  Rumbelow " 

"Call  her  ^My  Lady,'  "  said  Rumbelow. 

Hooker,  who  had  heard  of  this  foible,  went  on: 
"Hoping  that  you  and  My  Lady  would  dine  with 

me." 

■  "That  most  assuredly  we  will  do,  Mr.  Hooker. 
Thank  youj  I  have  long  wished  that  you  and  I  might 
be  better  acquainted.  I  believe  we  have  much  in 
common.  But  beware,  sir.  My  Lady  and  I  are  com- 
promising acquaintances  for  a  man  in  your  position 
and  with  your  connexions." 

"You  are  thinking  of  the  Ethical  Society,"  said 
Hooker.  "I  have  left  it.  And  as  to  being  com- 
promised, I  am  no  longer  solicitous  about  that." 

Rumbelow  was  silent  for  a  few  moments,  think- 
ing what  this  might  mean.  Then  suddenly  came  the 
question,  "What,  Mr.  Hooker,  are  your  views  on. 
gambling?" 

"All  my  life  long,"  replied  Hooker  j  "I  have  had 
a  horror  of  gambling.  It  is,  I  believe,  the  cause  of 
incalculable  harm.  I  regard  it  as  one  of  the  most 
terrible  scourges  of  society." 

"You  hit  me  hard,"  said  Rumbelow,  "and  you 
hit  me  on  a  sensitive  spot.  As  to  my  calling — if  I 
may  be  equally  frank — there  seems  not  much  to 
choose  between  yours  and  mine.  I  am  a  bookmaker  j 
you  are  a  profiteer.     Chance  has  made  us  both  what 

133 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

we  are.  Only,  with  me,  chance  has  been  scientifically 
handled.  I  have  worked  much  harder  for  my  for- 
tune, Mr.  Hooker,  than  you  have  for  yours.  Per- 
haps for  that  reason  the  moralists  think  me  the 
greater  villain.  Anyhow,  I  doubt  if  either  of  us  can 
afford  to  throw  stones.  Don't  you  think  we  might 
treat  one  another — well,  as  neighbours?" 

"In  strict  justice,"  said  Hooker,  "neither  of  us 
has  one  jot  or  tittle  of  right  to  his  fortune." 

"And  which  of  us,"  said  the  other,  "has  one  jot 
or  tittle  of  right  to  be  alive?" 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

"Only  that  the  larger  chances  of  life  include  the 
lesser.  There's  a  kind  of  gamble,  Mr.  Hooker,  at 
the  root  of  human  life.  Our  very  existence  depends 
upon  the  turning  of  a  hair,  the  flutter  of  a  butter- 
fly's wing.  If  you  trace  out  the  web  of  life  you  will 
find  that  the  origin  of  every  human  individual  hangs 
upon  some  contingency  fine  as  a  gossamer  thread. 
What  does  your  philosopsy  make  of  that?" 

"Nothing,"  said  Hooker.  "It  is  the  most  inex- 
plicable thing  in  the  universe.  No  philosophy  can 
face  it." 

"I  believe,"  the  bookmaker  continued,  "that  all 
events  are  guided  and  controlled  by  invisible  powers. 
Our  meeting  to-night,  for  example,  was  unquestion- 
ably prearranged,  and  I  have  little  doubt  that  it 
will  lead  on  by  some  unsearchable  path  to  issues  of 
the  greatest  importance.  As  a  gambler  and  a  student 
of  gambling,  I  find  the  invisible  world  constantly  in 
my  thought  as  a  very  close  reality.  A  fine  estima- 
tion of  odds  is  the  nearest  approach  the  human  in- 
tellect can  make  to  the  secret  of  destiny.    The  secret 

134 


THE  MAD  MILLIONAIRE 

itself  we  can  never  penetrate,  but  in  some  of  the 
higher  operations  of  our  Firm  we  come  very  near 
to  it — surprisingly  near,  I  assure  you,  so  that  one 
feels  that  another  step  would  carry  the  mind  clean 
over  the  boundary  which  separates  the  visible  from 
the  invisible  world — which  is  much  the  more  real 
of  the  two,  sir." 

Mr.  Hooker  sat  astonished,  not  only  at  what  the 
other  was  saying,  but  at  the  intensity  and  conviction 
of  his  manner.  The  gravity  of  a  thinker  sat  upon 
his  brow  and  the  fervour  of  a  devotee  was  in  his 
voice.  He  remembered  his  interview  with  Polycarp, 
and  how  aloof  he  had  seemed  to  be  from  his  inter- 
locutor. But  with  this  man  he  seemed  to  be  stand- 
ing on  his  own  level,  and  strangely  at  home,  even 
though  the  language  spoken  was  one  he  could  not 
understand. 

"I  don't  follow  you,"  he  said.  "In  my  view  of 
things  chance  has  no  place  and  no  meaning.  We  are 
under  the  reign  of  law,  and  everything  happens  as 
it  must." 

"Perfectly  true  of  natural  forces,"  said  Rumbe- 
low,  "but  perfectly  futile  in  the  affairs  of  men.  Is  it 
not  strange,  Mr.  Hooker,  that  with  all  we  have  learnt 
about  the  uniformity  of  nature  and  the  reign  of  law, 
the  future  of  the  human  race,  the  thing  that  con- 
cerns us  most,  was  never  so  dark  and  inscrutable  as 
it  is  as  the  present  hour.  But  come  to  our  Office  j  ask 
almost  any  question  you  choose  about  an  important 
event  in  which  men  are  interested,  and  we  will  give 
you  the  odds  on  its  happening  as  closely  determined 
as  human  knowledge  can  make  them." 

"And  the  end  of  it  all  is,"  said  Hooker,  "that 

135 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

thousands  o£  men  and  women  are  being  morally 
ruined.  If  we  learnt  that  a  clerk  in  our  Firm  had 
been  betting  with  yours  we  should  turn  him  off  at 
a  moment's  notice." 

"I  am  not  blind  to  that  side  of  the  matter,"  said 
the  bookmaker.  "But  look  facts  in  the  face.  You 
cannot  suppress  the  gambling  spirit  5  it  belongs  to  the 
nature  of  life.  It  is  one  of  the  most  powerful  forces 
in  human  society,  and  will  always  remain  so.  The 
war  has  enormously  increased  its  power:  war  and 
gambling  are  twin  brothers.  The  soldier  has  been  a 
gambler  since  the  first  wars  were  made.  You  saw 
those  men  on  the  platform  before  the  train  started. 
They  were  men  of  the  battalion  I  served  with  at  the 
front — all  betting-mad  and  clamouring  for  the  odds 
on  this  and  on  that.  But  what  are  you  going  to  do? 
It  must  be  taken  in  hand,  controlled,  converted  to 
higher  uses — the  way  of  all  sound  reforms.  If  only 
men  like  yourself  would  cease  denouncing  the  thing, 
and  come  over  to  our  side  and  help  us  to  turn  this 
tremendous  force  into  the  right  channel,  instead  of 
wasting  your  fine  intellects  on  moral  propaganda  that 
interest  nobody  but  yourselves,  we  should  soon  have 
the  situation  in  hand  and  the  world  would  see  a  real 
instance  of  the  union  of  ideal  aims  with  businesslike 
methods,  and " 

"Stop!"  cried  Hooker j  "your  words  arrest  me. 
*The  union  of  ideal  aims  and  businesslike  methods' 
■^'ve  been  searching  for  that  phrase  for  weeks.  It 
says  what  I  was  trying  to  say  to  my  lawyer  this 
afternoon — exactly  expresses  what  I  mean.  Where 
did  you  get  it?" 

"  'Tis  the  motto  of  our  Firm,"  said  Rumbelow. 

136 


THE  MAD  MILLIONAIRE 

"But  you  have  not  heard  the  whole  of  It.  'The 
union  of  ideal  aims  with  businesslike  methods  and 
sportsmanlike  principles,'  " 

"I  don't  understand  the  last,"  said  Hooker. 
"'Sportsmanlike  principles!'  I  didn't  know  there 
were  such  things.  And,  if  there  are,  what  have  they 
to  do  with  ideal  aims?" 

"Everything.  It's  the  crowning  touch  j  the  grow- 
ing point  of  the  whole  enterprise  j  the  jumping-off 
place  for  the  next  great  undertaking  of  the  Firm. 
The  three  things,  sir — ideal  aims,  businesslike 
methods,  sportsmanlike  principles — form  the  strong- 
est confederation  of  spiritual  forces  ever  introduced 
into  human  affairs.  None  of  the  three  is  anything 
without  the  others.  In  combination  they  are  irre- 
sistible." 

Rumbelow  spoke  rapidly  and  his  eyes  flashed. 
Said  Mr.  Hooker: 

"I  get  no  further  than  the  'businesslike  methods.' 
This  afternoon  I  dropped  a  phrase  at  my  lawyer's 
which  brought  him  to  the  same  point.  I  said  that  I 
meant  to  finance  the  Moral  Ideal." 

"Bravo!"  cried  Rumbelow. 

"But  he  answered  that  the  Moral  Ideal  had  no 
business  organization  j  and  it  was  plain  that  he  treated 
it  as  the  hare-brained  notion  of  a  fool." 

"He  was  a  fool  to  think  so,"  said  the  other.  "It  is 
a  perfectly  sound  proposition — provided  you  add  the 
sportsmanlike  principles.  That,  sir,  is  the  mission 
of  our  Firm;  and  we  intend  to  carry  it  into  the 
highest  regions  of  human  interest — yes,  into  re- 
ligion itself." 

"Mr.  Hooker,"  he  went  on,  "you  know  something 

137 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

of  my  history.  You  think  of  me  doubtless  as  a  man 
who  has  had  an  evil  education.  'Tis  a  mistake. 
Every  stage  of  my  education  has  been  exquisitely 
adapted  to  the  purpose  of  my  life.  Every  step  has 
been  guided.  In  no  other  way  could  I  have  learnt 
what  is  needed  for  the  carrying  out  of  my  designs. 
In  no  other  way  could  I  have  gained  control  of  the 
forces  I  am  going  to  employ.  In  no  other  way  could 
I  have  discovered  the  means  of  mobilizing  wealth  for 
spiritual  ends  and  countering  the  imbeciles  who  now 
misgovern  the  world.  I  have  done  harm,  you  say. 
Doubtless.  But  not  one  thousandth  part  of  the  harm 
inflicted  on  mankind  by  the  powers  that  made  you 
a  multimillionaire.  The  men  who  wield  those  powers 
are  gamblers,  sir — with  this  difference  between  them 
and  me,  that  they  pretend  to  be  something  else.  They 
are  bunglers  at  their  own  game.  They  handle  forces 
they  can't  control.  Their  science  is  beneath  con- 
tempt. They  practise  arts  which  would  cause  a  man 
in  my  profession  to  be  instantly  expelled  from  the 
Turf.  I  tell  you,  sir,  that  Newmarket  will  go  into 
the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  before  Westminster  and 
Washington." 

"It  is  strange,"  said  Mr.  Hooker,  "that  in  all  this 
you  seem  to  be  saying  what  I  was  trying  to  say  to 
my  lawyer  this  afternoon.  I  told  him,  for  exam^ple, 
that  all  States  are,  fundamentally,  war-making  in- 
stitutions." 

"Conducted  by  politicians  and  diners-out  who 
know  nothing  about  war,"  added  Rumbelow.  "War, 
Mr.  Hooker,  is  the  supreme  gamble  in  which  all  the 
forces  of  our  civilization  come  to  their  inevitable 
issue.    Until  that  is  understood  wars  will  never  cease. 

138 


THE  MAD  MILLIONAIRE 

And  the  tragedy  is  that  the  men  who  run  the  gamble 
— the  politicians  and  the  diners-out — have  neither 
ideal  aim,  businesslike  method,  nor  sportsmanlike 
principle.  Your  own  fortune,  sir,  is  neither  more  nor 
less  than  a  by-product  of  a  huge,  clumsy,  stupid 
gambling  transaction  set  on  foot  by  gamblers  of  the 
most  incompetent  type — the  German  Emperor, 
for  example:  men  who  do  not  understand  the  bare 
rudiments  of  the  business.  You  and  I  ought  to  be 
friends.  Gambling  has  enriched  you  by  chance  5 
me  by  method." 

"You  cannot  make  me  more  ashamed  of  myself 
than  I  am,"  said  Hooker.  "But  all  this  does  not 
reconcile  me  to  gambling." 

"Then  you  must  go  deeper.  The  business  that 
I  conduct  is  saturated  in  metaphysics.  It  rests  on 
the  truth  that  the  whole  universe  is  in  essence  a 
sporting  event.  A  sportsmanlike  principle  is  inter- 
v/oven  with  the  very  stuiOF  of  reality.  Life  itself, 
INIr.  Hooker,  if  you  study  its  origin,  was  a  win  against 
enormous  odds — hence  all  the  greater  virtues  of 
mankind,  courage,  magnanimity,  loyalty  and  love. 
In  the  beginning  was  the  wager!  The  losses  have 
been  colossal,  unimaginable!  Only  a  Divine  uni- 
verse would  have  dared  to  back  itself  against  such 
odds — or  escaped  bankruptcy  so  long.  What  better 
proof  could  you  have  that  the  universe  is  Divine?" 

As  the  ex-president  of  the  Ethical  Society  listened 
to  this  outburst,  half  hypnotized  by  the  intense  ani- 
mation of  his  companion,  two  feelings  alternated  in 
his  mind  and  strove  for  the  mastery.  Now  it  was 
a  feeling  of  profound  relief,  as  though  the  heavy 
burden  of  his  life  were  falling  from  his  shoulders 

139 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEO\T.R 

and  the  problem  that  had  baffled  him  so  long  on  the 
point  of  being  solved.  Now  it  was  a  feeling  of 
dream-like  bewilderment,  as  though  the  occasion, 
the  place,  the  objects  in  the  carriage,  the  man  before 
him,  were  all  unreal  and  about  to  vanish. 

And  so  they  did,  but  not  by  the  touch  of  a  spirit 
hand. 

As  Rumbelow  was  concluding  his  last  sentence 
Mr.  Hooker  heard  in  the  far  distance  a  prolonged 
whistle.  It  grew  rapidly  louder  and  was  answered  by 
another  near  at  hand.  Rumbelow  flung  open  the 
window  and,  leaning  far  out,  peered  ahead. 

There  was  a  violent  jarj  a  screech  of  suddenly 
arrested  wheels j  the  light  thickened  j  the  air  grew 
foul  with  dust.  Then  a  terrific  crash  and  total  dark- 
ness. 

It  was  as  if  all  the  violence  in  the  world  had  been 
suddenly  let  loose  upon  the  millionaire.  He  was 
hurled  from  side  to  side,  struck  in  the  face,  twisted, 
compressed,  suffocated,  drenched  with  water,  and  at 
last  flung  headlong  with  his  mouth  in  the  dust. 
There  he  was  held  tight  j  he  could  not  move  nor  see 
nor  speak.  But  consciousness  was  alive — the  con- 
sciousness of  the  unendurable. 

What  had  happened?  He  knew  not.  He  remem- 
bered afterwards  how  his  agony  had  framed  itself 
into  a  question,  and  how  he  had  halted  between  two 
opinions.  Was  he  in  this  world  or  the  next?  The 
next,  assuredly  5  and  survival,  then,  was  a  fact.  He 
was  sorry.  Why  should  his  mouth  be  full  of  dirt? 
Why  should  he  be  held  fast  in  a  vice?  Was  it  to  be 
always  so?     Or  was  this  only  the  beginning  of  the 

140 


THE  MAD  MILLIONAIRE 

resurrection?  Ha!  things  were  improving  already! 
The  weight  on  his  body  was  growing  lighter — he 
could  move  his  leg.  There  was  air  in  his  face.  And 
surely  that  was  a  voice  he  knew.  It  was  saying: 
"Lay  him  on  the  embankment  and  put  that  cushion 
under  his  head.  Hand  me  the  crowbar — quick! 
There's  another  yet."    So  it  was  this  world  after  all. 

Time  in  these  things  cannot  be  reckoned:  it  does 
not  go  by  the  clock.  There  came  a  moment,  per- 
haps soon,  when  Hooker,  roused  by  a  sense  of  new 
danger,  found  himself  on  his  feet,  trembling  and 
dazed.  Not  far  off  a  fierce  fire  was  raging,  the 
flames  were  blowing  his  way  and  the  hot  sparks  were 
stinging  him.  Close  at  his  feet  lay  a  little  girl  with 
broken  legs,  shrieking  with  terror  and  pain.  He 
stooped  down,  and  taking  hold  of  the  child  by  its 
arms,  for  he  could  not  lift  it,  dragged  it  along  with 
him  a  little  further  from  the  flames. 

He  hardly  knew  where  he  was.  He  gazed  va- 
cantly around  him,  noting  the  sights,  but  indifferent 
to  their  meaning.  Screams,  imprecations  and  horrible 
cries  rent  the  air  and  seemed  to  break  out  in  chorus. 
Somebody  was  yelling  out  the  words  of  the  Lord's 
Prayer  j  another  was  calling  on  Jesus  Christ  and 
mingling  his  name  with  obscenities.  He  was  aware 
of  figures  running  hither  and  thither  in  the  glare 
and  shouting  to  one  another.  "Quick  with  the 
buckets! "  "There's  water  in  the  engine! "  "Helpers 
to  the  rear  of  the  train!"  "Shovels  and  picks  this 
way!"  These  were  the  shouts.  But  there  was  one 
sound  that  fixed  his  attention  more  than  all  the  rest. 
It  was  the  voice  of  a  child  calling,  "Mother,  mother." 

Unable  to  stand  longer  he  sank  down  into  the 

141 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

seat  of  a  first-class  carriage  which  had  been  split  in 
two,  trying  to  collect  himself,  to  piece  things  to- 
gether. Vague  memories  of  his  conversation  with 
Rumbelow  haunted  him.  But  what  next?  The 
gambling  losses  of  the  universe,  the  great  virtues  of 
mankind,  loyalty  and  love,  and  then — the  light  goes 
out,  a  shock,  agony,  a  resurrection,  the  next  world 
and  then — this  world  again.  There  was  no  in- 
telligible sequence.  He  closed  his  eyes,  and  as  he 
did  so  the  truth  began  to  dawn  upon  him. 

There  was  a  hand  on  his  shoulder  and  he  heard  a 
voice.  He  opened  his  eyes  and  saw  in  front  of  him 
the  dark  figure  of  a  v/oman,  her  hat  gone  and  her 
hair  hanging  in  disorder  over  her  shoulders. 

She  stood  for  a  moment  looking  into  his  face, 
and  then  kneeling  down  gave  him  a  drink  of  brandy 
out  of  a  flask.  Hooker  eagerly  swallowed  the 
draught.  As  he  drank  there  rose  before  him  with 
visual  clearness,  and  perfect  in  every  detail,  a  scene 
from  his  boyhood,  when  he  had  fallen  from  a  horse 
and  his  mother  kneeling  beside  him  was  holding 
brandy  to  his  lips,  exactly  as  this  woman  was  doing. 
"Surely  she  is  my  mother,"  he  thought  j  and  in  a 
moment  his  arm  was  round  her  neck,  he  drew  her 
head  down  to  his,  kissed  her  fervently  and  said, 
"God  bless  you,  dearest  mother"  j  and  he  held  the 
woman's  face  close  to  his. 

In  a  moment  the  illusion  broke,  his  wits  returned 
and  he  knew  where  he  was  and  what  he  had  done. 
"Forgive  me,"  he  said,  releasing  his  arm.  "The 
shock  had  bereft  me  of  my  senses.  I  was  in  a  dream. 
I  thought  you  were  my  mother." 

"It  was  a  lovely  thing  to  happen  in  a  hell  like 

142 


THE  MAD  MILLIONAIRE 

this,"  she  said.    "I  shall  not  forget  it."    And  with- 
out another  word  she  went  away. 

Hooker,  greatly  revived  by  the  brandy,  got  upon 
his  feet  and  followed  in  the  direction  the  woman  had 
taken,  resolved  to  help  if  he  could.  Presently  a 
man,  running  in  the  opposite  direction,  crossed  the 
line  to  intercept  him.  It  was  Rumbelow,  wrapped 
in  a  steaming  wet  blanket  and  with  the  hair  burnt 
off  one  side  of  his  head.  "Ah,  that's  good,  Mr. 
Hooker!  You  had  a  near  shave.  The  whole  mass 
collapsed  the  moment  after  we  got  you  out.  WeVe 
had  a  terrible  struggle  at  the  burning  coach,  and 
only  saved  three.  But  now,  if  you  can  do  anything, 
follow  me  to  the  rear  of  the  train.  There  are  sol- 
diers under  the  wreckage." 

Hooker  followed  as  best  he  could,  miserably  con- 
scious that  he  was  too  sick  and  unsteady  to  be  of  any 
use.  He  made  his  way  with  difficulty,  falling  once  or 
twice  over  obstacles.  By  the  time  he  reached  the  end 
of  the  train  he  could  stand  no  longer,  and  sat  down, 
helpless,  on  a  lady's  cabin  trunk.  In  front  of  him 
was  a  third-class  coach,  tilted  on  its  side  and  partly 
telescoped  by  the  one  behind  itj  cries  were  coming 
from  beneath.  Near  by  two  men,  dreadfully 
crushed,  lay  on  the  track  j  they  were  shrieking  and 
writhing  about.  Another  was  brought  out  by  the 
soldiers,  and  died  almost  immediately  under  his  eyes. 
Rumbelow,  with  four  or  five  others,  passed  before 
him,  carrying  a  broken  rail  to  be  used  as  a  lever.  The 
rail  was  placed  in  position  and  a  dozen  men,  hanging 
their  weight  upon  it,  strove  in  vain  to  move  some 
huge  obstacle.  Presently  they  desisted,  and  one  of 
them  said,  "We'll  never  get  him  out,  sir.     There's 

143 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

tons  on  top  of  him."  Another  said,  "He's  dead  al- 
ready. He's  stopped  groaning."  Then,  to  belie  the 
last  speaker,  the  voice  of  the  imprisoned  man,  dis- 
tinct and  piteous.  "Is  the  Major  there?  Oh,  God, 
I  want  to  speak  to  the  Major." 

"I'm  here,  sergeant,"  cried  Rumbelow,  peering 
under  the  wreckage.  "Keep  up,  man.  We'll  have 
you  out  yet." 

The  voice  replied  as  before,  "Oh,  God,  I  want  to 
speak  to  the  Major,"  and  repeated  the  words  again 
and  again. 

A  guard's  lamp  had  been  placed  on  the  ground, 
and  by  the  light  of  it  the  top  of  the  man's  head 
could  be  plainly  seen  behind  a  tangle  of  wheels  and 
timbers.  Above  the  head  were  his  two  hands  caught 
between  boards  and  hanging  from  the  broken  wrists, 
like  the  hands  of  a  man  in  the  pillory. 

Rumbelow  flung  him.self  on  the  ground,  and  began 
to  worm  his  way  in.  He  advanced  a  few  feet,  but 
could  get  no  further.  Then  he  tried  at  another  point, 
and  had  nearly  reached  his  object  when  a  piece  of 
wreckage  in  front  of  him  sank  down  and  the  passage 
was  blocked.  Again  he  came  out,  and  starting  from 
the  other  side  made  a  third  attempt.  A  doctor  who 
was  standing  by  put  something  into  his  hand. 

As  Rumbelow  worked  his  way  in  he  could  hear 
the  man  from  time  to  time  repeating  his  cry  in  a 
fainter  voice.  At  last,  despairing  of  getting  further, 
he  called  out,  "Now,  sergeant,  what  is  it?  I  can't 
come  any  nearer." 

The  man  gave  a  reply,  but  the  voice  had  become 
a  whisper  and  the  words  were  lost.  Then  Rumbelow 
began  to  pull  at  the  objects  in  front  of  him,  and  one 

144 


THE  MAD  MILLIONAIRE 

of  them  yielding  a  little  he  was  able  to  force  his 
shoulders  forward  and  to  bring  his  head  almost  into 
contact  with  the  man's.  Immediately  above  him 
hung  the  crushed  body  of  a  dog,  and  its  feet,  dan- 
gling down,  brushed  the  back  of  his  neck. 

"The  dog's  dead,  sir,"  gasped  the  man.  "Bought 
it  for  my  missus.    She's  main  fond  of  a  dog." 

"I'll  buy  her  another." 

"And  send  it  to  Wigan,  sir,  please.  A  fox 
terrier." 

"I  will." 

"Put  your  hand  in  the  front  pocket  of  my  tunic, 
sir.     There's  forty  pound." 

"I  have  it." 

"And  put  it  on  the  Blue  Bird,  sir.  And  if  we  win, 
send  the  money  to  the  old  woman." 

"Sure  thing,  sergeant." 

"Thank  God,"  said  the  manj  and  after  a  few  in- 
coherent mutterings  he  sank  into  his  last  sleep. 

When  Rumbelow  emerged  from  the  wreckage  he 
had  the  appearance  of  a  man  who  had  been  rolled 
in  blood.  He  had  been  lying  in  a  pool  of  it,  while 
the  blood  of  the  suspended  dog,  dripping  on  to  his 
head  and  shoulders,  had  done  the  rest.  A  cheer 
greeted  him  from  the  group  of  soldiers,  and  the 
doctor  began  asking  him  questions. 

"I'm  not  hurt,"  said  Rumbelow,  "only  filthy  raid 
sick.  I  must  sit  down.  And  here's  your  opium.  It 
wasn't  needed.    The  man's  dead." 

Then  his  eye  fell  upon  Hooker,  seated  on  the 
cabin  trunk  a  few  yards  oflF.  As  he  crossed  the  line 
he  said  to  the  guard,  who  was  holding  the  lamp, 
"Go  down  the  train  and  try  to  find  My  Lady.    She 

145 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

has  some  brandy."  Then  he  sat  down  beside  Hooker 
on  the  cabin  trunk. 

For  some  minutes  the  two  millionaires  sa,t  thus  in 
silence  side  by  side,  Rumbelow  unable  to  speak. 
Presently  the  guard  stood  in  front  of  them  with  a 
flask  of  brandy  in  his  hand,  "My  Lady  will  be  here 
directly,  sir,"  he  said.  "She's  helping  a  doctor.  I 
told  her  you  weren't  hurt." 

"This  gentleman  first,"  said  Rumbelow,  as  the 
guard  handed  him  the  brandy.  And  for  a  moment 
the  two  men,  feeble  as  they  were,  seemed  inclined 
to  dispute.  The  guard  decided  the  quarrel.  Hold- 
ing the  brandy  to  Rumbelow's  lips  he  forced  him 
to  drink  J  and  the  other  drank  after  him. 

"And  now,  if  you  can,  tell  me  what  happened," 
said  Hooker. 

"I  took  a  bet,"  said  the  bookmaker,  "and  I  have 
been  very  near  to  the  invisible  world.  The  man's 
dead." 

Hooker  replied:  "I  want  to  say  one  thing,  and  to 
say  it  while  I  can.  I  have  heard  of  many  heroic 
deeds,  but  have  never  seen  one  before.  The  one  I 
have  just  seen  has  made  a  deeper  impression  than  the 
thousands  I  have  heard  about." 

"I  tell  you,"  said  the  other,  "I  was  making  a  bet. 
It  was  all  in  the  way  of  business."  And  he  told  what 
had  happened. 

Another  voice  interrupted  him.  "You're  sure  you 
are  not  hurt,  dearest?"  it  said.  And  Hooker,  look- 
ing up,  saw  with  astonishment  the  woman  who  had 
given  him  the  brandy,  bending  over  the  bloody  figure 
of  Rumbelow. 

"Not  at  all,"  was  the  answer.     "Only  my  old 

146 


THE  MAD  MILLIONAIRE 

wound  hurts  a  bit.  But  let  me  present  a  companion 
in  distress." 

"Oh,"  she  cried,  "we  are  friends  already!  Mr. 
Hooker  presented  himself  just  now  in  the  most 
beautiful  way  imaginable.  He  shall  tell  you  about 
it  himself.  But  not  now.  Come  along,  both  of  you. 
The  relief  train  is  up,  and  we  can  do  nothing  more." 
And  the  three  moved  off  in  silence  down  the  line. 

As  they  were  going  a  soldier  ran  after  them. 
"Excuse  me,  sir,"  he  said,  addressing  Rumbelow, 
"but  all  of  us  in  our  carriage  were  backing  the  same 
'oss  as  the  sergeant." 

"How  many?"  asked  the  bookmaker. 

"Well,  sir,  there  was  thirteen  of  us  to  begin  with — 
unlucky  number,  sir — but  three,  that's  includin'  the 
sergeant,  are  killed  j  there's  six  safe,  and  the  rest 
casualties.    Two  can't  speak." 

"Ten  in  all,  then.  Write  out  your  bets  and  post 
them  to  the  office." 

"What  about  them  two  as  can't  speak,  sir?" 

"Put  them  in  along  with  the  rest.  I'll  be  respon- 
sible." 

"And  what  about  the  dead  men,  sir.  One  of  'em 
leaves  a  widow  and  five  children." 

"Double  their  stakes.  I'll  be  responsible  for  them 
too." 

"Thank  you,  sirj  if  ever  there  was  a  real  sports- 
man livin',  it's  you,  sir,  though  pardon  the  liberty." 

The  soldier  left  them.  The  woman,  linking  her 
arm  in  her  husband's,  said,  "That,  dearest,  is  not 
business." 

"Good  enough  for  this  hell,"  said  Rumbelow. 

And  what  was  Mr.  Hooker  thinking  as  he  listened 

147 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

to  these  things?  Perhaps  he  was  not  thinking  at 
all,  but  exercising  some  deeper  faculty  which  the  ex- 
perts have  not  yet  named. 

One  might  suppose  that  with  such  an  exhibition  of 
violence  under  his  eyes,  he  would  at  all  events  have 
been  in  no  doubt  as  to  the  reality  of  an  external 
world.  The  actual  effect  was  precisely  opposite. 
Things  visible  and  material  seemed  not  to  have  es- 
tablished, but  to  have  destroyed  themselves.  To 
his  own  consciousness  at  that  moment  he  was  a 
broken  thing  in  a  broken  world,  where  logic  had  ex- 
ploded in  the  general  shock,  and  where  everything 
that  happened  was  incredible.  All  that  he  saw  about 
him,  all  that  he  heard,  all  that  he  felt  even,  seemed 
unconvincing  and  unimportant.  The  wrecked  train, 
the  horrible  mess,  the  clouds  of  dust  and  steam  were 
signs  of  a  universal  collapse  in  which  his  own  per- 
sonality had  broken  up  along  with  everything  else. 
The  voices  of  Rumbelow  and  the  soldiers  were  dream 
voices  j  their  proceedings  fantastic  and  irrational. 
The  pains  that  shot  through  his  body,  the  faintness, 
the  nausea,  the  laboured  breadth,  the  dizzy  brain — at 
one  moment  he  would  feel  these  things  as  his  own,  at 
the  next  he  would  observe  them  from  a  centre  of 
complete  indifference,  as  though  they  were  the 
miseries  of  another  person  in  whom  he  had  no  in- 
terest. Then  it  would  seem  to  him  that  what  had 
happened  did  not  matter  in  the  least,  and  if  the  skies 
had  fallen  in  upon  the  ruin  it  would  have  made  no 
difference. 

Rumbelow  and  My  Lady  were  walking  on  in 
front,  the  man  leaning  heavily  on  the  frailer  form 
of  the  woman.     Hooker  followed  close  behind,  sup- 

148 


THE  MAD  MILLIONAIRE 

porting  his  steps  with  a  broken  umbrella  he  had 
picked  up  on  the  line,  and  aware  that  he  might  fall 
at  any  moment.  As  he  watched  the  two  in  front 
there  came  over  him  the  sense  of  a  cruel  and  in- 
equitable contrast.  "Here  is  this  man,"  he  thought, 
"leaning  on  a  woman  who  belongs  to  him,  and  here 
am  I  leaning  on  an  umbrella  that  belong  to  some- 
body else.     The  universe  is  fundamentally  unjust." 

He  struggled  on,  full  of  contempt  for  the  um- 
brella and  hungry  to  share  the  strong  support  he 
saw  in  front.  "If  only  I  could  lay  hold  of  that 
woman's  arm,"  his  thought  went  on,  "I  should  know 
where  I  was.  I  should  stagger  no  morej  I  should 
rest  upon  the  only  firm  and  solid  thing  that  is  left 
in  the  world.    Why  should  Rumbelow  have  it  all?" 

His  resources  were  coming  to  an  end.  Making  a 
desperate  effort  to  hurry  forward  and  overtake  the 
object  of  his  desire,  his  limbs  suddenly  gave  way 
beneath  him  and  he  fell  heavily  on  the  line.  As  he 
fell  he  clutched  at  the  woman's  skirts,  and  words 
came  to  his  lips  which  he  had  used  to  another  woman 
few  days  before. 
For  pity's  sake,  my  dear  lady,  take  me  some- 
where.   I  am  completely  lost." 

In  the  relief  train  the  three  were  separated. 
Hooker  was  laid  on  a  stretcher  and  placed  with  many 
others  in  the  guard's  van.  As  he  lay  there  his  mind 
wandered  among  confused  and  terrible  images,  find- 
ing no  rest. 

Little  by  little  his  thought  took  definite  form  and 
concentrated  upon  a  point.  "Had  not  Rumbelow 
saved  my  life,"  it  ran,  "those  accursed  millions  would 

149 


A 

ii 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

now  belong  to  the  Society  for  Ethical  Culture.     I 
have  yet  to  make  my  Will." 

He  was  greatly  troubled.  Now  the  trouble  would 
seem  to  expand  and  blow  itself  out  to  immense  pro- 
portions until  it  lost  its  outlines  in  the  realms  of  non- 
sense. Now  it  would  contract  again  and  return  to 
a  burning  focus  in  the  problem  of  his  Will.  And 
along  with  this  a  conviction  that  there  was  only  one 
way  of  escape.  He  must  throw  away  his  broken  um- 
brella and  get  a  firm  grip  on  the  woman's  arm. 
The  guard,  standing  over  him,  noticed  that  from 
time  to  time  he  would  fling  out  his  hands  and  clutch 
at  something  that  seemed  to  be  eluding  his  grasp. 


150 


CHAPTER  FIVE 
The  Transfiguration  of  a  Mouse 

"|\/jriDNIGHT  had  passed  on  the  day  of  the  acci- 
-^^-^  dent  when  the  millionaire,  in  complete  col- 
lapse, his  clothes  torn,  his  face  covered  with  dirt,  was 
delivered  by  the  driver  of  an  ambulance  into  the 
hands  of  his  chauffeur  and  head  gardener,  who  had 
been  anxiously  awaiting  their  master's  arrival.  By 
them  he  was  carried  upstairs  on  the  stretcher  and 
deposited  upon  his  bedj  the  housekeeper  was  then 
roused  and  a  consultation  held.  Should  Mrs.  Hooker 
be  summoned?  The  suggestion  was  immediately 
negatived  by  a  decisive  shake  of  the  head  from  Mr. 
Hooker.  An  hour  later  a  doctor  was  in  attendance, 
and  shortly  after  a  trained  nurse.  Matters,  so  said 
the  doctor,  looked  serious. 

In  the  days  that  followed  Mr.  Hooker  gained  for 
the  first  time  in  his  long  life  a  direct,  experimental 
knowledge  of  the  disagreeable  process  of  dying. 
Most  men  who  pass  through  the  penultimate  stage 
of  death  go  on  to  the  last,  and  so  leave  no  witness  be- 
hind them.  But  it  had  been  ordained  for  the  million- 
aire that,  as  yet,  he  was  not  to  die,  but  only  to  make 
a  very  close  acquaintance  with  death  as  a  positive 
factor  in  life.  Hitherto  he  had  treated  it  as  nega- 
tive, as  a  thing  or  a  no-thing  which  must  not  be 
suffered  to  trouble  the  thoughts  of  a  wise  man.    Ac- 

151 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

cording  to  the  admirable  philosophy  on  which  his 
conduct  of  life  had  been  founded,  we  must  continue 
our  efforts  to  improve  the  world,  without  reference 
to  the  certainty  that  the  more  we  improve  it  the 
more  men  lose  when  they  die.  With  death  as  a  fact 
of  daily  occurrence,  Mr.  Hooker  was,  of  course, 
thoroughly  familiar  j  but  neither  its  normal  ravages 
in  times  of  peace  nor  its  abnormal  ravages  during  the 
war  had  undone  his  conviction  that  it  should  be 
treated  as  a  negligible  or  negative  thing.  It  is  true 
that  the  death  of  his  three  sons  had  shaken  him  at 
that  point,  giving  him  a  vague  sense  that  there  was 
something  out  of  perspective  in  his  picture  of  life. 
From  the  philosophical  point  of  view,  however,  all 
that  was  a  mere  weakness,  to  be  rebuked  by  the  well- 
known  saying  of  Spinoza,  He  knew  by  heart  all 
the  tunes  which  philosophers  whistle  to  keep  up  their 
courage  when  passing  the  cemetery. 

But  now  he  was  making  his  approach  to  death  on 
the  ground  of  personal  experience,  which,  philoso- 
phers may  be  reminded,  is  a  very  different  thing 
from  speculation  about  it.  Death,  like  most  abstrac- 
tions, is  presumably  unreal,  but  dying  has  a  distinct 
savour  of  reality.  Mr.  Hooker  began  in  fact  to 
die,  and  so  rapidly  as  to  leave  in  those  about  him 
little  hope  of  his  recovery.  It  was,  to  him,  a  poign- 
ant experience.  The  physical  shock,  supervening 
on  a  period  of  mental  tension  which  had  long  been 
taxing  his  vitality,  brought  him  down,  by  no  prim- 
rose path,  to  the  very  gates  of  the  grave,  salting  him 
with  fire  at  every  step  of  the  way,  both  in  body  and 
in  mind.  That  permanent  possibility  of  pain  which 
physiologists  call  the  nervous  system  had  been  cen- 

152 


TRANSFIGURATION  OF  A  MOUSE 

trally  attacked  j  and,  through  the  broken  barriers 
and  the  open  gates,  the  imprisoned  fury  poured  into 
his  field  of  consciousness  like  an  inundation.  Storms 
of  pain  overtook  him  at  intervals  3  they  would  en- 
gulf him 3  they  would  blot  out  his  awareness  o£ 
everything  else,  turning  his  whole  being  into  an 
impersonal  sea  of  agony,  with  no  meaning  save  that 
which  was  expressed  in  the  moaning  of  its  waves. 
The  pain  over,  he  would  fall  into  a  lassitude  so 
extreme  that  he  wondered  if  he  were  not  already 
dead 3  the  objects  about  him  would  become  insub- 
stantial, the  light  a  mere  attenuated  darkness.  There 
were  nights  of  fever,  when  he  would  struggle  for 
long  hours  to  break  away  from  his  self-conscious- 
ness, battling  with  it  as  with  a  nightmare  3  and  these 
would  be  followed  by  days  of  depression,  when  the 
thin  blood,  propelled  by  a  feeble  pulse,  was  hardly 
vitalized  enough  to  maintain  the  sense  of  his  identity. 
And  sometimes,  when  depression  was  at  its  lowest, 
there  would  suddenly  occur  moments  of  elation,  of 
strange  and  delightful  discoveries,  of  illumination 
and  peace — perhaps  due  to  the  action  of  an  opiate, 
perhaps  the  work  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  On  these 
occasions  he  would  become  acutely  conscious  that  he 
was  in  the  near  presence  of  death  3  he  would  wonder 
what  was  coming  next,  intensely  curious,  as  though 
the  romance  of  his  life  were  about  to  begin. 

Through  all  the  phases  of  this  experience  there 
ran  a  ground  tissue,  sometimes  reduced  to  a  mere 
thread,  which  connected  everything  else  with  the 
scenes  of  the  accident.  From  that  point  the  images 
in  his  mind  seemed  to  originate,  and  to  that,  how- 
ever  far  they   might  have  wandered  afield,   they 

153 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

would  always  come  back  at  last.  Around  this 
imagery  he  would  weave  all  kinds  of  queer  philo- 
sophical problems  and  wrestle  with  them  in  his  night- 
mare dreams.  They  would  haunt  him  in  the  day- 
time and  return  with  a  variation  next  night.  "Is 
life  worth  the  fuss  we  make  about  it?"  "Why  does 
the  world  break  our  bones  when  we  are  trying  to 
leave  it  a  little  better  than  we  found  it?"  "Whence 
comes  the  splendour  that  breaks  out  of  things  when 
they  are  at  their  very  worst?"  "Why  does  the  uni- 
verse listen  indifferently  to  the  lectures  of  the  Ethi- 
cal Society  about  the  Supreme  Good,  and  to^  the 
screams  of  women  enduring  the  Supreme  Evil  in 
a  burning  coach? "  "Where  can  I  find  a  ship  manned 
by  great  souls,  that  I  may  sail  off  with  them  into 
the  everlasting  Silence?"  These  were  some  of  the 
problems  afterwards  remembered  and  noted  down. 
The  last  returned  again  and  again.  Sometimes  he 
would  see  a  ship,  now  a  great  one  with  spreading 
sails,  now  a  boat  manned  with  oars  5  it  was  moored 
a  little  distance  from  the  shore  j  on  the  deck  stood 
the  bloody  figure  of  Rumbelow,  with  his  hair  burnt 
off,  and  beside  him  his  wife  holding  a  bran(;^y  flask 
and  beckoning  him  to  come  on  board.  These  two 
were  always  there,  but  they  were  never  alone.  Be- 
hind them  stood  others,  more  dimly  seen,  who  would 
vary  and  change  into  each  other — Miss  Wolfstone, 
his  three  sons,  the  nurse  who  attended  him,  and  a 
little  boy  dressed  as  a  pirate.  He  would  take  a  great 
leap  towards  them,  hoping  to  alight  on  the  ship,  and 
would  find  himself  falling,  falling,  into  a  bottomless 

abyss. 

Often  as  he  lay  awake  during  the  daytime  the 

154 


TRANSFIGURATION  OF  A  MOUSE 

things  about  him  would  seem  half  real,  thinning 
themselves  down  into  shadows,  into  ghosts.  The  wall 
opposite  looked  like  a  mass  of  suspended  grey,  and 
once  when  the  doctor  leaned  against  it  he  wondered 
why  he  did  not  fall  through.  The  dream  world  and 
the  waking  world  would  change  places.  He  spent 
long  hours  in  a  vain  effort  to  determine  which  was 
which,  but  always  came  back  to  the  conviction  that 
the  room  about  him  was  not  real,  and  that  the 
being  who  lay  outstretched  on  the  bed  was  not 
himself. 

Though  the  proximate  causes  of  all  this  lay,  no 
dcubt,  in  bodily  conditions  and  in  the  immediate 
train  of  events  which  had  led  up  to  them,  there  were 
remoter  causes  with  a  far  deeper  root  in  Mr. 
Hooker's  life.  A  man's  nightmares,  like  his  day- 
dreams, are  not  unrelated  to  his  character,  and  often 
betray,  when  closely  scrutinized,  the  preparations  of 
a  lifetime.  One  of  his  experiences,  which  he  re- 
corded with  particular  care  as  soon  as  he  was  able 
to  write,  and  passed  on  to  a  few  intimate  friends, 
clearly  presupposes  a  distinct  atmosphere,  and  could 
hardly  have  occurred  save  to  one  whose  nature  had 
long  been  nourished  by  dealings  with  the  moral  ideal. 
It  happened  a  few  days  after  the  worst  was  over. 
Hooker  being  then  in  the  first  stage  of  his  return 
journey  from  the  gates  of  death. 

The  only  person  in  whose  presence  he  had  taken 
any  interest  during  his  illness  was  one  of  the  two 
nurses,  a  woman  of  fifty — thoughtful,  intelligent 
and,  as  Mr.  Hooker  was  quick  to  perceive,  highly 
conscientious.  With  her  he  would  from  time  to  time 
exchange  such  scraps  of  conversation  as  the  inter- 

155 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

mittent  lucidity  of  his  mind  permitted  him  to  main- 
tain. He  found  her  sympathetic,  and  felt  instinc- 
tively that  her  skill  was  merely  a  fine  form  in  which 
natural  kindness  expressed  itself.  With  that  strange 
insight  which  leads  the  heavy-laden  to  find  one 
another  out,  he  divined  that  she,  too,  had  received 
more  than  her  share  of  the  burden  of  lifej  and  once, 
acting  on  his  intuition,  he  said  to  her  quite  suddenly, 
"Nurse,  is  there  no  one  to  deliver  us  from  this  intol- 
erable load?"  The  woman  paused  in  her  work,  as 
though  her  own  thought  had  been  uttered,  and  he 
knew  from  the  way  she  looked  at  him  that  he  had 
spoken  home. 

Some  hours  afterwards,  the  time  being  then  about 
ten  at  night,  a  strong  desire  to  be  left  alone  came  over 
him,  and  he  asked  the  nurse  accordingly  to  turn  out 
the  lights  and  leave  him.  This  she  did,  the  room 
being  still  partly  illuminated  by  the  bright  fire  burn- 
ing in  the  grate. 

When  she  was  gone  and  the  room  silent,  the  queer 
thought  suddenly  took  possession  of  Hooker  that 
the  silence  was  the  sound  of  his  own  life.  It  seemed 
to  him  a  wonderful  thing,  and  he  sat  up  in  bed  to 
listen  to  it.  Presently  the  sound  of  the  silence  was 
broken  into  by  another,  very  faint.  It  was  the  gentle 
gnawing  of  a  mouse  behind  the  wainscot.  Of  this, 
after  a  time,  he  became  acutely  conscious — not  in 
irritation,  but  in  expectancy,  as  though  it  presaged 
the  coming  of  some  great  event.  Very  slowly  the 
new  sound  seemed  to  enlarge  and  multiply  j  at  first 
almost  inaudible  and  then  increasing  by  continuous 
change  within  itself  until  the  silence  was  full  of  it. 
It  was  the  evenness  of  the  crescendo  which  fascinated 

156 


TRANSFIGURATION  OF  A  MOUSE 

the  listener  j  and  this  also  he  found  wonderful  and 
amazing. 

Then  the  gnawing  ceased,  and  Hooker,  intensely 
alert,  fixed  his  eyes  on  the  corner  of  the  room  from 
which  it  had  come.  A  moment  later  the  mouse  itself 
appeared  on  the  floor,  a  tiny  apparition  born  from 
nowhere  in  particular,  now  creeping  warily  in  search 
of  fallen  crumbs,  now  darting  with  incredible  velocity 
from  point  to  point,  now  vanishing  in  a  flash  at  the 
sound  of  a  footstep  outside.  It  was  here,  it  was 
there  i  it  came  and  it  wentj  it  was  and  it  was  not. 
As  for  Hooker,  no  marvel  he  had  ever  seen  or 
heard  of  could  compare  with  the  gorgeous  mys- 
tery of  the  self-originated  movements  of  this  little 
beast. 

At  last  the  creature  came  to  a  pause,  sat  upon  its 
hind  legs,  turned  towards  Hooker,  and  lifting  its 
forefeet  began  demurely  to  clean  its  face.  The  effect 
on  the  millionaire  was  overwhelming.  In  an  instant 
it  was  as  though  all  the  values  in  the  universe  had 
inverted  themselves  and  become  concentrated  in  the 
being  of  the  mouse.  What  importance,  what  ade- 
quacy, what  completeness!  It  seemed  a  focus  of 
intense  but  calm  luminosity,  where  all  forces,  prob- 
lems, agitations  came  to  restj  the  centre  of  a  universe 
radiating  perfection  upon  all  its  surroundings  till 
they  became  transfigured;  the  minute  growing  point 
of  a  renovated  world.  Such  was  the  vision,  if  vision 
it  was.  As  Hooker  gazed  upon  the  astonishing  thing 
and  felt  the  room  and  all  the  objects  in  it  reverberat- 
ing with  the  splendours  that  streamed  from  the  cen- 
tral point,  the  whole  burden  of  life  fell  from  himj 
his  problems  seemed  to  solve  themselves  j  or  rather 

157 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

they  mattered  not  at  allj  they  were  empty  phan- 
toms. But  this  was  realj  and  the  conviction  seized 
him  that  the  essence  of  things  was  altogether  lovely 
and  lovable,  that  the  ultimates  were  secure,  and  that 
he  himself  would  be  kindly  dealt  with  at  the  last. 
Till  that  moment  he  had  never  known,  or  even 
dreamed,  what  happiness  really  is. 

And  now  the  nurse  had  entered  the  room.  Again 
it  was  her  movement  that  attracted  him.  It  was  an 
astonishment,  a  delight,  a  pageant  of  beauty  beyond 
utterance.  Whithersoever  the  spirit  went,  she  went, 
impelled  by  self-actuated  forces,  which  seemed  to 
link  her  with  all  nature,  with  the  rolling  tides  and 
the  flowing  winds  and  the  courses  of  the  everlasting 
stars  and  the  rivers  of  eternal  life.  She  walked  in 
glory  J  her  nurse's  garments  made  music  as  she 
passed  j  her  plain  and  patient  features  were  no  morej 
it  was  an  angel  from  Paradise  that  was  offering  him 
food. 

"Nurse,"  he  said  quietly,  as  she  bent  over  him, 
"you  are  a  radiant  and  wonderful  being!" 

She  gazed  at  him  in  astonishment,  in  alarm.  An 
hour  earlier  she  had  left  him  a  wasted,  weary  man 
looking  ten  years  older  than  he  was.  Now  he  was 
ten  years  younger,  perfectly  calm  and  self-possessed, 
but  every  feature  in  his  face  aglow. 

"You  are  wonderfully  better,  sir,"  she  said. 

"I  feel  a  new  life  in  me,"  he  answered.  "The 
truth  is  I  have  just  made  a  great  discovery,  in  which 
you,  and  everything,  seem  to  participate.  This  world 
is  a  queer  place,  nurse." 

"Some  people  would  give  it  a  worse  name  than 
that,"  she  answered. 

158 


TRANSFIGUR.4TION  OF  A  MOUSE 

"They  are  wrong,"  said  Hooker  with  decision  j 
"they  should  give  it  a  better." 

"But  what  was  the  great  discovery,  Mr.  Hooker?" 

"Promise,"  he  said  with  a  smile,  "that  you  will  not 
report  me  to  the  doctors  to-morrow  for  being  out  of 
my  mind,  and  I  will  tell  you." 

"I  promise,"  she  answered. 

"Well,  then — /  have  just  seen  a  mouse  as  it  really 
is.  And  I  can  tell  you  that  it  really  is  something  ten 
thousand  times  more  wonderful  than  it  seems  to  be. 
So  are  you.    So  is  everything  in  the  world." 

The  nurse,  sorely  puzzled  and  not  knowing  what 
to  say,  went  away  from  the  bedside  and  stood  gazing 
into  the  fire.  After  a  little  she  turned  to  Mr.  Hooker 
and  said: 

"You  may  remember  that  Jesus  Christ  used  to  see 
the  flowers  as  they  really  arej"  and  she  quoted  the 
words  about  the  lilies  of  the  field. 

"Ha!"  he  cried,  "that  rings  true!  But  I  had  for- 
gotten it.  Thirty  years  ago  I  dismissed  all  that  from 
my  life,  because  I  abhorred  the  use  that  has  been 
made  of  it.  Since  then  I  have  hardly  opened  the 
New  Testament  except  to  find  a  quotation  now  and 
then.  Perhaps  I  have  been  wrong.  I  must  read  it 
again.    Perhaps  to-morrow." 

"If  you  will  allow  me,"  she  said,  "I  will  read  it 
aloud  to  you." 

That  night  Hooker  slept  well.  Next  day  the  doc- 
tor was  jubilant  at  the  change.  Before  leaving  he 
drew  the  nurse  aside. 

"Anything  peculiar  last  night?"  he  asked.  "Any 
more  queer  fancies?" 

"Not  a  trace,"  she  answered.     "He  was  perfectly 

159 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

self-collected,  and  talked  in  the  most  sensible  man- 
ner imaginable." 

"He  is  distinctly  better,"  said  the  doctor. 

"I  am  sure  he  is,"  said  the  nurse. 

For  more  than  a  week  the  readings  from  the  New 
Testament  went  on,  Mr.  Hooker  steadily  recovering 
day  by  day.  At  the  end  of  that  time  they  had  read 
through  the  Four  Gospels,  the  major  Epistles  of  St. 
Paul,  the  Epistles  of  St.  John  and  the  Book  of 
Revelation,  Hooker  making  no  comments  meanwhile, 
but  promising  the  nurse  to  give  her  his  impressions 
when  they  had  finished. 

"I  think,"  he  said  at  length,  "what  I  have  thought 
and  often  said  during  the  last  thirty  years,  that  the 
least  Christian  thing  in  the  world  is  Christianity — 
not,  of  course,  as  it  exists  in  simple  lives,  but  as  men 
have  set  it  out  in  books  and  creeds  and  churches.  But 
I  had  no  idea  till  now  that  the  original  was  so  good, 
so  penetrating,  so  powerful  and  so  generous.  The 
misconceptions  about  Jesus  Christ  are  really  scan- 
dalous. It  is  a  terrible  misfortune  that  the  churches 
and  the  chapels  have  captured  him.  I  imagine  that 
the  real  man  was  about  as  unlike  the  current  concep- 
tions of  him  as  two  things  could  possibly  be  to  one 
another.     But  perhaps  I  offend  you?" 

"Far  from  it,"  said  the  nurse;  "I  have  often 
thought  these  things  but  never  dared  to  say  them." 

"Coming  to  it  all  afresh  after  so  long  an  interval," 
he  went  on,  "it  makes  a  surprising  impression — an 
impression  of  something  the  flat  opposite  of  the 
mournful  thing  that  passes  current  as  Christianity, 
with  its  funeral  airs  and  its  incubus  of  a  God.     It 

160 


TRANSFIGURATION  OF  A  MOUSE 

seems  to  me,  now,  as  though  it  were  the  proclamation 
of  a  great  holiday  for  the  spirit  of  man.  Essentially 
a  festive  thing — a  song,  not  a  sermon.  Those  clos- 
ing discourses  of  St.  John,  for  instance,  are  full  of 
high  spirits — simply  exuberant  j  there  is  nothing 
there  in  the  minor  keyj  and  then  that  passage  about 
drinking  wine  in  the  Father's  Kingdom,  and  most  of 
all  the  Parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son,  which  culminates 
in  a  merry-making.  And  the  lilies  of  the  field  that 
make  a  mock  of  Solomon  and  all  his  glories  j  and  the 
sparrows,  not  one  of  which  is  forgotten  before  God! 
The  infinite  importance  of  the  particular!  The 
vision  of  the  hidden  beauty  of  the  world!  It  all 
bears  upon  that.  Why,  nurse,  if  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
were  to  walk  into  this  room,  he  would  tell  you,  as 
I  did,  that  you  are  a  radiant  and  wonderful  woman." 

"Perhaps  if  he  were  to  tell  me  so,  I  should  believe 
it,"  said  the  nurse. 

"You  touch  on  an  interesting  point,"  he  answered. 
"When  you  were  reading  I  was  constantly  struck  by 
the  extraordinary  power  he  had  over  women.  They 
were  always  about  him  and  were  deeply  implicated 
in  his  life.  Some  of  his  finest  sayings  come  out  in 
conversation  with  them.  With  the  Woman  of  Sam- 
aria, for  example,  he  reaches  his  very  highest  point. 
He  seems  to  have  required  their  presence  as  an  in- 
centive to  his  genius — a  thing  I  have  often  observed 
in  men  of  exceptionally  fine  nature.  I  find  him 
joyous  and  even  romantic — as  unlike  as  possible  to 
the  hortatory  personage  he  is  commonly  supposed  to 
have  been.    But  I  must  not  go  on." 

"Oh,  do,"  she  replied.  "I  have  been  longing  to 
hear  this  for  twenty  years." 

161 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

"I  suspect,"  said  Hooker,  "that  if  women  had 
drawn  up  the  creeds  of  the  Church  they  would  have 
given  a  very  different  version  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion from  the  horrible  travesty  men  have  made  of 
it.  At  least  they  wouldn't  have  lost  the  keynote,  as 
men  have  done.  After  all,  the  Magdalen  under- 
stood him  far  better  than  St.  Peter.  I  wish  she  had 
written  a  Gospel." 

"Don't  you  think,"  asked  the  nurse,  "that  some  of 
her  memories  have  been  preserved?" 

"Renan  thought  so.  In  several  of  the  passages 
you  read  I  was  conscious  of  a  woman's  touch.  In  the 
stories  about  children,  for  example,  I  seemed  to  be 
in  direct  contact  with  a  woman's  mind.  I  wonder 
that  people  are  not  aware  of  it.  Probably  they  are 
blinded  by  the  Church  and  Chapel  conventions  that 
have  been  woven  round  the  whole  subject.  What  a 
pity!" 

"Yes,  indeed,"  said  the  nurse.  "But  you  seem  to 
have  forgotten  the  Cross,  Mr.  Hooker.  Does  that 
belong  to  the  festival?" 

"There  is  something  strange  about  that,  which  I 
can't  quite  penetrate  yet,  and  must  think  over.  But 
while  you  were  reading  that  part  of  the  story  it 
seemed  to  link  itself  on,  in  a  very  remarkable  man- 
ner, to  the  impression  I  got  of  you  a  few  days  ago, 
and  that  still  lingers  with  me.  Does  the  Cross  mean 
anything  to  youF" 

"It  is  the  part  of  Christianity  that  I  am  best 
acquainted  with,"  said  the  nurse,  and  the  tears  swam 
in  her  eyes. 

"I  thought  so,"  said  Hooker  5  "and  there,  I  im- 
agine, we  have  something  in  common." 

162 


TRANSFIGURATION  OF  A  MOUSE 

Not  many  days  afterwards,  nothing  to  the  purpose 
having  been  said  in  the  meantime,  Hooker  again  re- 
turned to  the  subject. 

"That  was  a  strange  experience  of  mine  the  other 
night,"  he  said.  "It  still  goes  on  reverberating, 
though  the  echoes  are  growing  fainter  every  day.  I 
was  like  a  man  going  down  into  a  dark  chasm  until 
I  reached  at  last  the  central  blackness  of  the  pit. 
Then  I  took  one  step  more,  and  came  out,  to  my 
immense  surprise,  into  the  most  radiant  and  joyous 
surroundings.  I  have  been  asking  myself  whether  It 
was  an  abnormal  occurrence  or  whether  it  may  not 
be  after  all  a  natural  sequence  in  the  order  of  the 
world — the  best  and  the  worst  meeting,  so  to  speak, 
at  their  extremities." 

"I  think  it  was  natural,"  said  the  nurse  j  "things 
often  turn  out  like  that." 

"I  am  glad  you  think  so,"  said  Hooker.  "I  should 
be  sorry  if  the  experience  were  morbid  or  unnatural. 
But  now  it  is  passing  off  and  the  world  grows  almost 
as  grey  as  ever.  I  wish  I  could  capture  that  moment 
and  retain  the  spirit  of  it." 

"You  should  do  a  good  deed,"  said  the  nurse. 
"You  should  give  somebody  a  cup  of  cold  water." 

"I  have  thought  of  that,  too,"  replied  the  mil- 
lionaire; "but  the  trouble  is  that  I  can't  think  of  any 
deed  good  enough  for  the  purpose." 

"A  very  little  thing  would  do  it,"  she  answered. 

"Have  you — have  you  found  that  so  yourself?" 

"It's  my  profession,"  said  the  nurse;  "what  I  am 
paid  for  and  earn  my  living  by." 

"Then  I  shall  turn  the  tables  on  you,"  said 
Hooker,  and  a  smile  came  into  his  face  which  seemed 

163 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

to  betoken  that  the  joyous  experience  had  not  alto- 
gether passed  away. 

She  looked  at  him  in  surprise.  "What  do  you 
mean?"  she  asked. 

"As  I  said,"  he  went  on,  "I  have  been  thinking 
about  a  deed  to  commemorate  the  occasion  and  to 
capture  the  spirit  of  it.  And  I  have  hit  upon  one 
which  springs  naturally  out  of  the  circumstances — 
not  good  enough,  but  good  as  far  as  it  goes.  When  I 
recover,  one  of  my  first  acts  will  be  to  place  you  in  a 
position  of  complete  independence." 

"Impossible!"  she  cried.  "No,  no — you  don't 
understand,  Mr.  Hooker.  Nothing  in  this  world 
would  induce  me  to  give  up  my  profession.  /  should 
be  selling  the  Cross.'* 

"I  expected  you  to  say  something  of  the  kind, 
though  not  to  put  it  in  that  way,"  said  Hooker.  "But 
you  needn't  give  up  your  profession.  I  shall  merely 
place  you  in  a  position  where  you  can  choose  for  your- 
self whether  you  will  give  it  up  or  not." 

She  seemed  bewildered,  and  Hooker  went  on. 

"Whenever  a  gift  is  in  question  two  wills  are  in- 
volved— the  will  of  the  giver  and  the  will  of  the 
receiver.  I  cannot  give  unless  you  consent  to  receive. 
I  ask  your  will  to  co-operate  with  mine  in  doing  the 
very  thing  you  said  I  ought  to  do.  You  cannot 
refuse." 

"But  it  will  be  misunderstood,"  said  the  nurse. 

"Doubtless,"  replied  Hooker.  "But  for  my  part 
I  am  long  past  the  point  where  I  could  attach  the 
least  importance  to  the  misunderstandings  of  the 
world.    And  so,  I  imagine,  are  you." 

Once  again  tears  swam  in  the  woman's  eyes,  and 

164 


TRANSFIGURATION  OF  A  MOUSE 

from  the  way  she  thanked  him  Hooker  knew  that 
he  was  doing  a  good  deed.  And  the  conviction  was 
so  reassuring  and  so  pleasant  as  to  leave  no  doubt 
in  his  mind  that  he  had  caught  the  very  spirit  he 
wished  to  commemorate.  For  the  first  time  a  light 
seemed  to  dawn  on  the  problem  which  had  so  long 
been  haunting  him.  He  had,  in  fact,  embarked  upon 
a  road  on  which  he  was  to  travel  far.  It  was  as 
though  his  dream  was  beginning  to  come  truej  as 
though,  at  last,  after  his  many  fallings  into  the 
abyss,  he  was  actually  on  board  "the  Ship  of  Great 
Souls,"  with  whom  he  was  destined  to  sail  away  into 
the  silence. 


165 


CHAPTER  SIX 
Mr.  Hooker  Faces  the  Worst 

IX/jTR.  HOOKER,  as  we  have  told,  had  trained 
■^^■^  himself  to  "systematize"  his  conduct  under  a 
unitary  law  of  action.  But  when  he  asked  himself, 
as  he  presently  did,  how  far  his  promise  to  the  nurse 
conformed  to  his  Great  Principle  of  "so  affirming  his 
own  personality  as  to  help  others  to  affirm  theirs," 
he  became  involved  in  some  mental  confusion.  He 
found  that  if  he  made  certain  large  assumptions 
about  the  nurse,  and  about  himself,  and  looked  at  the 
matter  from  a  carefully  chosen  angle  of  vision,  the 
action  and  the  Principle  seemed  in  tolerable  accord. 
But  if  he  dropped  the  assumptions  and  changed  the 
angle  of  vision,  and  imagined  certain  contingencies, 
there  was  no  making  the  two  fit  one  another.  From 
one  point  of  view,  which  he  was  unconsciously  de- 
termined not  to  take,  the  action  looked  extremely 
rash.  It  might  be  fraught  with  disastrous  conse- 
quences to  the  personality  of  the  nurse  and  of  other 
people,  including  his  own.  And  he  began  to  won- 
der whether,  after  all,  there  might  not  be  some  truth 
in  the  doctrine  of  the  Will-to-believe.  But  that 
question  did  not  disturb  his  fundamental  serenity 
of  mind. 

At   an   earlier  time   these   theoretical   difficulties 
would  have  given  Mr.  Hooker  an  uneasy  conscience, 

166 


MR.  HOOKER  FACES  THE  WORST 

would  have  worried  him  during  the  daytime,  kept 
him  awake  at  night,  and  led  him  into  many  long 
and  inconclusive  arguments  with  his  friends  in  the 
Society  for  Ethical  Culture.  But  now,  though  he  was 
fully  aware  of  the  existence  of  these  conundrums, 
they  seemed  to  him  of  no  weight.  The  promise  that 
he  had  just  given  to  this  woman,  of  whom  he  knew 
little,  sprang  so  naturally  out  of  the  circumstances, 
was  so  entirely  in  keeping  with  the  joyous  tone  and 
the  radiant  atmosphere  of  his  recent  experience,  and 
so  exactly  expressed  the  spirit  he  wished  to  com- 
memorate, as  to  give  him  an  inner  assurance  that 
he  was  doing  right — an  assurance  without  which  he 
was  incapable  of  undertaking  any  deliberate  action. 
To  tell  the  truth,  he  was  a  little  astonished  at  him- 
self j  but  it  was  a  pleasing  astonishment,  such  as  a 
man  may  feel  when  he  makes  an  interesting  dis- 
covery. And  the  pleasure  was  further  enhanced  on 
finding  that  Mr.  Polycarp,  an  extremely  critical  man 
of  the  world,  after  a  few  professional  hesitations, 
gave  the  business  his  emphatic  approval  and  promptly 
began  his  part  of  it.  Doubtless  Mr.  Polycarp  had 
been  making  inquiries,  but  had  he  known  how  far 
Mr.  Hooker,  once  started  on  this  new  track,  was 
destined  to  go,  he  would  have  expressed  himself  dif- 
ferently. 

Mr.  Hooker's  illness,  and  the  experiences  which 
attended  it,  had  for  the  time  being  taken  him  out  of 
the  atmosphere  of  the  insoluble  problems  that  were 
haunting  his  life.  But,  as  he  had  told  the  nurse,  the 
world  about  him  was  now  losing  this  fleeting  radi- 
ance, and  sinking  back  again  into  its  customary  grey; 
which  meant  that  his  problems  were  returning. 

167 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

They  were  the  problems  of  a  high-principled  man 
whose  principles  were  no  match  for  his  circumstances, 
and  which,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  could  not  apply. 
It  had  fallen  to  his  lot  to  summarize  in  his  own  per- 
son the  essential  conditions  of  the  harassed  and  aim- 
less civilization  into  which  he  had  been  born,  a  civili- 
zation which  has  set  itself  to  heap  up  riches  without 
knowing  who  should  gather  them,  or  for  what  pur- 
pose they  ought  to  be  gathered.  To  the  ungoverned 
forces  of  this  social  maelstrom  he  owed  the  position 
in  which  he  found  himself  j  they  had  thrust  his 
wealth  upon  him,  they  had  slain  his  sons,  they  had 
ruined  his  life.  By  creating  the  war  they  had  created 
his  problems,  which  had  been  tossed  up  as  it  were 
out  of  the  boiling  confusion  of  the  world,  and  as- 
signed to  him  for  solution.  Why  to  him  rather 
than  to  anybody  else?  As  well  might  we  ask  why 
Simon  of  Cyrene  was  suddenly  pounced  upon  by  the 
Roman  legionaries,  haled  out  of  the  crowd,  and  com- 
pelled to  bear  the  cross  of  Jesus  Christ. 

Of  all  Mr.  Hooker's  burdens,  by  far  the  heaviest 
and  the  ugliest,  but  the  least  spoken  of,  waited  for 
him  daily  in  his  own  horne — his  wife!  Under  the 
shock  of  a  grief  greater  than  her  affectionate  nature 
could  bear,  an  hereditary  taint  had  suddenly  declared 
itself  j  the  imprisoned  thing,  once  at  large,  worked 
havoc  5  and  in  six  months  she  had  become  a  terrible 
wreck — her  mind  unhinged  by  an  irresistible  craving 
for  alcohol,  and  constantly  infuriated  by  a  violent 
antipathy  towards  her  husband.  A  set  of  apartments 
in  the  vast  and  gloomy  mansion  had  been  allotted  to 
her;  there  she  lived  almost  a  prisoner,  guarded  by 
two  trained  attendants.     All  that  science  could  sug- 

168 


MR.  HOOKER  FACES  THE  WORST 

gest,  every  influence,  every  entreaty  that  could  be 
thought  of,  had  been  tried  in  vain. 

Day  and  night  this  dreadful  thing  kept  its  watch 
over  Hooker's  life.  What  was  he  to  do?  How 
apply  his  Great  Principle  to  a  situation  like  that? 
At  this  point,  as  at  so  many  others.  Hooker  felt  that 
he  was  no  longer  steering  his  ship  by  chart  and 
compass,  but  battling  for  life  in  a  hungry  and  merci- 
less sea.  And  who  would  pity  a  multimillionaire? 
Who  imagine  that  he  was  not  the  most  enviable  of 
mankind?     Great  God,  if  they  had  only  known! 

One  day,  when  convalescence  was  well  advanced, 
Mr.  Hooker,  who  so  far  had  spoken  no  word  about 
his  wife,  directed  the  nurse  to  inquire  whether  it  was 
possible  for  her  to  see  him.  He  was  well  aware  that 
if  this  had  been  possible  before,  it  would  have  been 
done  J  and  her  continued  absence  had  told  him  all  he 
needed  to  know.  It  was  a  thing  of  which  he  could 
not  bring  himself  to  speak. 

The  nurse  left  the  room  and  presently  returned 
with  the  report  that  Mrs.  Hooker  was  too  ill  to  see 
him  that  day.  He  knew  what  that  meant,  and  his 
countenance  fell. 

A  moment  later  the  door  was  thrown  violently 
open,  and  Mrs.  Hooker,  maddened  with  drink,  her 
hair  dishevelled,  her  clothes  wet  and  torn,  flung  her- 
self into  the  room — an  appalling  apparition.  Stand- 
ing at  the  foot  of  the  bed  and  grasping  the  brass  rail 
with  both  hands,  so  that  force  would  be  needed  to 
remove  her,  she  poured  out  a  flood  of  accusations. 

"Where  are  my  sons,  you  villain?"  she  cried. 
"Where  is  George?  Where  is  Edward?  Where  is 
Alec?     They  are  mine,  not  yours!     I  brought  them 

169 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

into  the  world!  I  went  down  into  the  valley  of  death 
three  times  for  their  sakes!  You  didn't!  You  have 
sold  them!  You  have  sold  my  property!  Millions 
have  been  paid  you  for  their  blood!  To  hell  with 
you  and  your  money !     Judas ! " 

The  dreadful  scene  lasted  but  a  few  seconds.  The 
attendant  from  whom  she  had  escaped  in  the  night 
was  quickly  on  the  spot  and  the  poor  woman  was 
taken  away.  This  was  the  last  time  that  Hooker 
saw  his  wife.  When  she  was  gone  he  lay  for  hours 
thinking  of  what  she  had  once  been  and  of  what 
she  now  was.  He  was  drinking  the  very  dregs  of 
his  cup: 

"Nessun  maggior  dolore 
Che  recordisi  del  tempo  f  elice 
Nella  miseria." 

A  week  later  her  superhuman  cunning  again  de- 
feated the  vigilance  of  her  guardians.  For  a  day 
and  a  night  no  trace  could  be  found  of  her.  On  the 
second  day  her  dead  body  was  discovered  in  an  out- 
house of  the  home  farm,  where  she  had  secreted  a 
store  of  champagne  under  a  heap  of  straw,  by  what 
means  no  one  knew.  She  had  evidently  determined 
to  destroy  herself  in  this  manner.  In  the  neck  of 
one  of  the  empty  bottles  that  lay  around  her  she 
had  inserted  a  scrap  of  paper,  on  which  she  had 
scrawled  directions  as  to  where  and  how  she  wished 
to  be  buried,  adding  at  the  end:  "George,  Edward, 
Alec:  Glory,  Glory,  Hallelujah!" 

When  the  news  was  broken  to  Hooker  he  merely 
remarked:  "I  shall  attend  her  funeral."  The  rest 
of  the  day  he  spent  alone. 

170 


CHAPTER  SEVEN 
And  Discovers  the  Unreal 

IN  our  dreams  we  are  all  familiar  with  the  broken 
sequence,  the  interrupted  continuity,  the  irra- 
tional new  start.  It  is  this  perhaps  that  most  dis- 
tinguishes dreams  from  waking  experience.  A  train 
of  images  will  maintain  its  coherence  up  to  a  certain 
point,  and  then  suddenly  slide  off  into  another  which 
has  no  connection  with  what  has  gone  before.  You 
are  in  a  railway  carriage  conversing  with  an  intimate 
friend  J  a  moment  later,  without  any  noticeable  tran- 
sition, you  are  in  a  wood  fighting  a  duel  with  an  un- 
known antagonist.  You  are  outside  Salisbury 
Cathedral  admiring  its  beauties;  you  enter  and  find 
yourself  without  the  least  surprise  inside  the  Albert 
Hall  listening  to  a  political  speech.  You  are  at  the 
side  of  a  river,  looking  at  the  opposite  bank  and  won- 
dering how  you  can  get  across;  then  without  making 
any  passage  you  are  across,  looking  at  the  bank  you 
have  just  left.  In  the  waking  world  there  are  nat- 
ural transitions  from  point  to  point,  in  the  dream- 
world the  transitions  are  either  unnatural  or  want- 
ing altogether;  and  for  that  reason,  chiefly,  our 
dreams  seem  unreal  and  meaningless. 

Extreme  suddenness,  occurring  at  important  points 
of  life,  has  the  same  effect  in  our  waking  experience. 
A  poor  man  opening  his  letters  one  morning  learns 

171 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

that  a  relative  in  Australia,  whose  existence  he  has 
forgotten,  has  left  him  heir  to  half  a  million.  For  a 
long  time  afterwards  he  will  declare,  quite  truly,  that 
"it  all  seems  like  a  dream!"  The  sudden  death  of 
one  whose  life  was  interfused  with  the  current  of  our 
own  affects  us  in  a  similar  manner.  The  wife  whose 
husband  has  been  killed  in  an  accident  or  fallen  down 
dead  in  a  fit  of  heart  failure  will  seem  to  herself  to 
be  in  a  world  of  unrealities,  and  will  tell  you,  as 
before,  "she  is  in  a  dream."  Even  when  death  is 
not  physically  sudden,  the  interruption  of  sequence 
in  the  moral  world  is  so  violent,  especially  when  the 
broken  relationship  is  a  vital  one,  that  it  often  leaves 
the  survivor  in  a  dreamlike  atmosphere  for  many 
days. 

This  was  the  atmosphere  which  Mr.  Hooker  was 
breathing,  and  breathing  deep,  in  the  days  that  fol- 
lowed the  death  of  his  wife.  As  he  gave  his  evidence 
at  the  inquest,  which  he  did  without  betraying  the 
least  emotion,  so  that  people  wondered  at  his  indif- 
ference; as  he  interviewed  the  undertaker  and  the 
clergyman,  and  showed  to  the  latter  the  pathetic 
scrap  of  paper  on  which  the  suicide  had  written  her 
wishes;  as  he  viewed  for  the  last  time  the  dead  body 
of  the  woman  who  had  been  for  long  years  the  centre 
of  his  beautiful  family  life;  as  he  sat  alone  in  his 
library  pondering  the  train  of  events  which  had  cul- 
minated in  this  manner — his  feeling  was  not  only 
that  the  events  themselves,  but  that  the  whole  scheme 
of  things  to  which  they  belonged,  was  phantasmal, 
and  that  he  himself  would  presently  awake  to  find  it 
so.  It  was  all  catastrophic,  unexpected,  irrational;  a 
world  of  violent  and  illogical  changes,  where  the  rea- 

172 


AND  DISCOVERS  THE  UNREAL 

sons  of  things,  if  they  had  any,  only  disclosed  them- 
selves after  the  event,  and  where  in  consequence  it 
was  impossible  to  prepare  oneself  for  what  was  com- 
ing next.  Had  some  infallible  messenger  of  truth 
appeared  upon  the  scene  and  assured  Mr.  Hooker 
there  and  then  that  the  war  was  a  dream  j  that  its 
strange  consequences  to  himself  had  never  taken 
place  j  that  his  wealth  and  his  bewilderment,  his 
sorrows  and  his  philosophy  were  fictions;  that  the 
railway  accident  was  a  nightmare;  that  Rumbelow 
was  the  ghost  of  his  fancy;  and  he  himself  the  in- 
habitant of  another  sphere  of  which  all  these 
things  were  the  distorted  shadows — Mr.  Hooker 
would  have  found  in  the  words  of  that  mes- 
senger a  mere  echo  of  his  own  mind,  not,  perhaps, 
of  its  articulated  thought,  but  most  assuredly  of 
its  tone. 

In  the  midst  of  these  dreamlike  inconsistencies  and 
dim  suspicions  there  was,  however,  one  point  which 
obstinately  asserted  itself  as  having  solid  value  and 
harbouring  no  illusion.  Whenever  Mr.  Hooker's 
mind  turned  back  to  his  deed  of  kindness  towards  the 
nurse  he  seemed  to  get  an  anchorage  in  the  firm 
ground  of  reality;  there  was  nothing  dreamlike  about 
that.  His  thoughts  in  these  days  often  turned  in 
that  direction,  not  for  any  pleasure  he  might  have  in 
contemplating  his  own  benevolence,  but  because  he 
found  there  a  resting  place  for  his  mind,  as  though 
it  were  the  one  bit  of  genuine  substance  in  the  sea  of 
fluctuating  shadows  by  which  he  was  surrounded. 
His  only  regret  about  the  matter  lay  in  the  feeling 
that  the  deed  was  too  small ,  that  it  needed  enlarging; 
and  this  feeling  finally  took  shape  in  a  resolution  to 

173 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

increase  the  scale  on  which  he  had  originally  intended 
to  endow  the  nurse. 

On  the  day  preceding  his  wife's  funeral,  to  which 
he  seemed  quite  indifferent,  he  spent  a  long  time  with 
his  lawyer  arranging  the  details  of  this  matter,  his 
mind  keenly  interested  and  alert.  Mr.  Polycarp, 
who  had  approved  of  the  deed  in  the  form  Mr. 
Hooker  had  first  presented  it,  was  amazed  on  learn- 
ing in  full  what  his  client  intended  to  do,  using  every 
argument  he  could  think  of  to  bring  him  to  reason, 
and  plainly  telling  him  the  mildest  construction  to  be 
placed  on  his  action  was  that  he  was  out  of  his  mind. 
But  he  could  make  no  impression  at  all  on  the  mil- 
lionaire's  resolution.    He  gave  the  nurse  £30,000. 

Mr.  Polycarp  went  away  from  the  interview  with 
the  gloomiest  forebodings.  "This  man,"  he  said  to 
himself,  "will  fall  under  the  influence  of  women  and 
will  end  by  perpetrating  some  gigantic  folly." 

Nor  would  his  fears  have  been  diminished  had  he 
been  able  to  read  Mr.  Hooker's  mind.  He  felt  com- 
plete satisfaction  in  what  he  had  done.  He  half 
fancied  he  could  hear  a  voice  crying,  "Do  it  again. 
Hooker;  do  it  again!"  "I  wish  I  had  made  it 
£50,000,"  he  said  aloud,  as  he  paced  his  library  on 
the  day  of  the  funeral.  "But,  thank  Heaven,  there 
are  others.  I  must  find  them  out — these  noble 
women.  There  is  Miss  Wolfstone.  She  shall  be  the 
next;"  and  his  face  beamed  with  joy. 

At  that  moment  the  undertaker  entered  the  room 
and  informed  Mr.  Hooker  that  his  wife's  coffin  had 
been  placed  in  the  hearse  and  that  the  funeral  was 
ready  to  start. 

Mrs.  Hooker  had  been  the  only  child  of  a  clerk 

174 


AND  DISCOVERS  THE  UNREAL 

in  the  original  clocli  factory.  Her  mother  had  died 
when  she  was  three  years  old,  under  circumstances 
not  dissimilar  to  those  which  had  attended  her  own 
death,  a  fact  which  had  been  concealed,  and  only  dis- 
covered when  the  experts  who  were  treating  Mrs. 
Hooker  began  to  make  inquiries.  Till  the  time  of 
her  marriage  she  had  kept  her  father's  house,  a  girl 
of  fine  character  and  a  devoted  daughter.  The  direc- 
tions she  had  scrawled  on  the  scrap  of  paper  were 
that  she  was  to  be  buried  in  her  father's  grave,  and 
she  had  also  named  the  clergyman  who  was  to  con- 
duct the  service. 

Besides  Mr.  Hooker,  the  doctor  and  some  of  the 
servants  there  were  only  three  mourners  at  the 
funeral — two  women  in  dingy  black  whom  Mr. 
Hooker  had  never  seen  before,  and  a  little  boy  with 
a  bad  cold. 

Mechanically  following  the  undertaker,  like  a  man 
walking  in  his  sleep,  the  bereaved  husband  took  his 
seat  in  the  car  beside  the  doctor,  the  hearse  imme- 
diately preceding.  The  doctor  was  instantly  struck 
by  his  absent-mindedness.  He  made  no  allusion  to 
his  wife,  showed  no  signs  of  grief,  and  seemed  to 
attach  not  the  least  importance  to  what  was  going 
forward.  Twice  the  doctor  tried  to  engage  his  atten- 
tion by  some  commonplace  remark.  "It  was  unfor- 
tunate the  weather  was  so  bad."  No  reply.  "After 
all,  they  ought  to  be  glad  that  Mrs.  Hooker's  life 
had  not  been  prolonged?"  Whereupon  Mr.  Hooker 
turned  upon  him  sharply:  "Don't  talk  to  me  about 
that,"  he  said}  "k  bores  me."  After  which  the  doc- 
tor held  his  peace,  while  Mr.  Hooker,  with  a  look 
of  intense  preoccupation  on  his  face,  seemed  to  be 

175 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

oblivious  of  the  other's  existence.  He  was  construct- 
ing plans  in  the  real  world  he  had  just  discovered. 
What  could  he  do  for  Miss  Wolf  stone?  How  was 
he  to  set  about  the  task  of  creating  for  her  some 
sphere  of  action  where  she  would  find  full  scope  for 
her  great  powers  of  mind  and  character?  Principles 
were  beginning  to  count  for  less  in  the  mind  of  the 
millionaire,  and  persons  for  more — a  dangerous  point 
of  transition. 

Arrived  at  the  cemetery  gates  the  official  in  charge 
of  the  place  put  a  telegram  into  his  hand.  He  was 
about  to  thrust  it  in  his  pocket  when  the  doctor  per- 
suaded him  to  open  it.  The  telegram  came  from  the 
clergyman  who  was  to  conduct  the  funeral.  'He  had 
been  taken  suddenly  ill,  but  the  cemetery  chaplain 
was  on  the  spot  and  would  take  his  place.'  Hooker 
merely  remarked,  "What  does  it  matter?  The  thing 
has  no  meaning,  anyhow.    Go  on." 

Presently  the  chaplain,  without  his  robes,  appeared 
on  the  scene.  The  man  had  evidently  been  drink- 
ing— we  will  suppose  for  charity's  sake  that  he  had 
not  expected  to  be  on  duty  that  afternoon — and  at 
once  began  to  bluster  about  the  sacrilege  of  burying 
a  suicide.  For  some  time  an  altercation  went  on 
between  him  and  the  superintendent  of  the  cemetery, 
which  ended  in  the  chaplain  assuming  his  robes  and 
leading  the  way  to  the  mortuary  chapel.  As  to  what 
went  on  inside,  the  less  said  the  better. 

The  abomination  over,  the  mourners  wound  their 
way  to  the  grave,  the  swaying  chaplain  at  their  head. 
It  was  raining  heavily,  and  they  had  a  long  way  to  go, 
to  a  part  of  the  cemetery  now  almost  disused.  At 
last  the  little  party,  under  dripping  umbrellas,  ar- 

176 


AND  DISCOVERS  THE  UNREAL 

rived  at  a  spot  where  a  rectangular  pit  had  been  dug 
among  the  crowded  tombstones.  The  chaplain  was 
already  half  through  the  committal  service,  which 
he  was  gabbling  in  the  falsetto  voice  of  official  piety, 
occasionally  losing  his  place  and  lapsing  into  incoher- 
ence. He  was  standing  at  the  head  of  the  grave, 
steadying  himself  against  a  tombstone,  on  the  top 
of  which  there  was  an  angel  blowing  a  trumpet.  The 
undertakers'  men  now  raised  the  coffin,  and  were 
about  to  lower  it,  when  one  of  them  slipped  on  the 
wet  clay,  the  men  at  the  other  end  lurched  forward, 
and  the  head  of  the  coffin  fell  heavily  on  the  chap- 
lain's foot.  "Damn  and  blast  you,"  he  roared  out, 
"what  are  you  doing?"  Whereupon  one  of  the 
women  in  black,  who  had  been  restrained  with  diffi- 
culty from  making  a  scene  in  the  mortuary  chapel, 
threw  down  her  dripping  umbrella,  stepped  over  the 
open  grave  and  struck  the  drunken  chaplain  a  violent 
blow  in  the  face.    Let  a  veil  be  drawn  over  the  rest. 

Had  Mr.  Hooker's  senses,  and  their  attendant  sen- 
sibilities, which  were  finer  than  most  men's,  been  in 
full  commission  the  shock  of  this  hideous  thing 
would  have  been  overwhelming.  But,  mercifully, 
he  was  still  in  a  dream,  or  at  least  but  half  awake. 
As  they  walked  away  he  linked  his  arm  in  the  doctor's 
and  for  the  first  time  his  tongue  was  unloosed. 

"We  are  arrived  at  last! "  he  said. 

"Arrived  at  what?"  asked  the  doctor. 

"At  the  unreal  end  of  things.  At  the  vanishing 
point  of  all  significance.  At  the  point  where  every 
bit  of  sense  and  reality  has  been  strained  out  and 
nothing  but  nonsense  and  illusion  remains.  That 
scene  we  have  just  witnessed  represents  it.     Some 

177 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

people  would  say  that  you  touch  reality  when  you 
come  to  these  brutal  elements.  You  don't.  You 
touch  nonsense  and  nothingness." 

"It  gave  me  a  pretty  violent  shock,"  said  the  doc- 
tor. "I  can't  help  thinking  there  was  something  in 
it." 

"Something,  yes.  But  how  much?  Just  as  little 
as  there  possibly  can  be.  If  not  absolute  nothing, 
then  just  as  near  to  nothing  as  you  can  get." 

He  paused  for  a  space  and  then  went  on: 

"You  may  know  that  for  many  years  I  have  been 
a  student  of  philosophy,  combining  the  study  of  it 
with  a  business  life  and  with  ethical  propaganda — a 
queer  combination,  as  it  now  appears  to  me.  Till 
lately  I  was  President  of  the  Society  for  Ethical 
Culture,  the  members  of  which,  with  one  notable 
exception,  thought  I  was  beside  myself.  That  is 
now  a  closed  chapter,  though  I  may  tell  you  that 
had  it  not  been  for  the  man  who  saved  my  life  in 
the  accident,  and  then  for  the  care  of  the  good  nurse 
who  has  just  left  me,  the  Ethical  Society  would  have 
inherited  the  whole  of  my  fortune.  I  don't  care  who 
knows  it  and  am  quite  indifferent  to  what  people  may 
say.  Well,  most  of  the  philosophers  I  have  studied 
embark  on  what  they  call  the  *quest  for  reality.'  The 
Pathway  to  Reality  is  the  title  of  a  famous  book. 
They  should  do  the  exact  opposite — start  from  the 
other  end.  Reality  is  given  in  the  fact  that  they  are 
interested  in  finding  it.  Starting  from  that  they 
should  make  it  their  business  to  discover  the  Unreal, 
to  expose  it  for  what  it  is,  or  rather  for  what  it  isn't. 
They  would  find  the  Unreal  in  the  general  life  of 
the  civilization  that  is  going  on  around  them,  in  the 

178 


AND  DISCOVERS  THE  UNREAL 

sickness  and  miseries  of  an  acquisitive  society,  in  the 
murk  and  sordidness  of  things,  in  Smokeover  Ceme- 
tery, and  in  all  that  it  stands  for — though  I  imagine 
that  some  of  them  would  have  to  be  crucified  and  rise 
again  the  third  day  before  the  truth  began  to  dawn 
upon  their  minds.  The  whole  question  needs  to  be 
turned  round  and  set  up  on  its  other  end.  It  came  to 
me  in  this  way  during  my  illness,  with  something  of 
the  force  of  a  revelation." 

*'I  don't  follow  your  meaning,"  said  the  doctor. 

"Of  course  not.  To  follow  my  meaning  you 
would  have  to  follow  my  experience  during  the  last 
few  days}  and  your  bitterest  enemy  would  not  wish 
you  that.  Step  by  step  it  has  brought  me  down  to 
the  point  where  we  are  now  arrived — the  unreal  end 
of  things.  Between  that  and  the  real  end  there  is  an 
immense  interval.  In  less  than  a  fortnight  I  have 
traversed  every  step  of  the  way — to  find  myself 
herel  This  cemetery,  the  gloom  of  it,  the  hideous 
tombstones,  the  rotting  flowers,  the  funeral  service, 
the  chaplain,  drunk  or  sober,  represent  the  world 
with  the  values  gone  out  of  it.  There's  next  to 
nothing  in  the  whole  place!  As  a  specimen  of  reality 
it  is  beneath  contempt — a  province  in  the  Void,  a  bit 
of  the  universe  that  doesn't  matter.  Death  has 
dominion  over  it  all,  funeral  service  included. 
Ghosts,  doctor,  ghosts!  As  to  what  we  have  just 
witnessed,  take  it  as  an  episode  in  a  nightmare, 
nothing  more.    The  thing  is  too  bad  to  be  true." 

"I  am  afraid,"  said  the  doctor,  "that  what  you  are 
saying  is  too  good  to  be  true." 

For  some  time  they  had  been  in  the  car,  returning 
to  the  house,  Hooker  apparently  in  high  spirits  and 

179 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

the  doctor  both  amazed  and  alarmed.    Hooker  went 
on  with  his  parable. 

"I  have  something  else  to  say  which  you  as  a  medi- 
cal man  ought  to  know.  There  are  hidden  powers 
in  human  life  which  when  once  they  are  liberated 
work  astonishing  transformations.  But  the  process 
of  liberating  them  is  terrible  to  the  last  degree,  and 
may  easily  kill  the  strongest  man.  Indeed,  it  may  be 
that  death  is  the  natural  mode  by  which  they  are 
liberated  in  all  men.  It  seemed  so  to  me  when  I  was 
on  the  point  of  dying.  I  was  conscious  of  the  begin- 
ning of  an  immense  enlargement.  But  beware,  doc- 
tor, how  you  tamper  with  those  powers.  They  are 
high  explosives." 

"I  have  heard  of  such  things,"  said  the  doctor. 
**But  they  wither  on  contact  with  the  brutal  facts  of 
life." 

"You  are  mistaken,"  said  Hooker.  "It  Is  the 
brutal  facts  of  life  that  wither  on  contact  with  them. 
They  linger  on  and  hold  their  ground  against  all 
comers.  They  are  the  only  key  we  have  to  the  mean- 
ing of  this  otherwise  abominable  world.  To-day  has 
been  the  witness  of  it.  From  first  to  last  I  have  stood 
above  it  all,  yes,  superior  to  it,  completely  master  of 
it.  At  this  moment  I  feel  myself  immeasurably 
strong.  Forces  have  been  helping  me:  I  know  not 
what  they  are,  or  who  they  are,  and  am  not  anxious 
to  know.  Perhaps  they  are  great  souls  still  inhabit- 
ing the  flesh — one  of  them  has  been  in  my  thoughts 
for  many  hours.  Perhaps  they  are  the  spirits  of  the 
departed.  Perhaps  they  are  the  ultimates  of  the  uni- 
verse. But  they  are  realy  doctor,  they  are  realy  and 
what  else  matters?" 

180 


AND  DISCOVERS  THE  UNREAL 

The  doctor  listened  to  all  this  without  comprehen- 
sion, but  with  a  grave  doubt  lurking  in  the  back- 
ground of  his  mind.  He  was  reflecting  that  Hooker 
on  returning  home  would  be  alone  for  the  rest  of  the 
day,  both  the  nurses  having  departed  j  and  he  saw 
danger  ahead.  He  resolved  that  he  would  spend 
the  night  in  the  house.  Hooker  had  no  difliculty  in 
divining  his  thought.  His  perceptions  just  then  were 
abnormally  acute. 

"Doctor,"  he  said,  "your  manner  betrays  you. 
You  are  alarmed — I  see  it  in  your  face.  I  know  what 
you  are  afraid  of,  and  I  don't  wonder.  If  anyone 
six  months  ago  had  spoken  to  me  as  I  have  just 
spoken  to  you  I  should  have  drawn  exactly  the  in- 
ference that  is  troubling  you.  Yesterday  my  lawyer 
informed  me  that  I  was  out  of  my  mind,  and  now 
you  are  thinking  the  same  thing — which  is  unfor- 
tunate for  me  at  a  moment  when  important  business 
has  to  be  transacted.  But  spend  the  night  in  the 
house,  and  tell  me  frankly  to-morrow  whether  or  no 
you  can  certify  me  as  sane.  I  have  a  reason  for 
asking  it." 


181 


CHAPTER  EIGHT 

And  Begins  to  Make  Use  of  His  Discovery 

MR.  HOOKER'S  accession  to  vast  fortune  had 
been  so  rapid  that  sufficient  time  had  not  yet 
elapsed  to  gather  round  him  that  permanent  retinue 
of  friends,  admirers  and  hangers-on  whose  mission  it 
is  to  attend  the  sorrows,  feast  at  the  tables  and  occupy 
the  bedrooms  of  the  rich.  Hence  it  was  that  the  doc- 
tor, seated  next  morning  at  his  solitary  breakfast  in 
the  great  dining-room,  had  the  impression  of  being 
in  a  deserted  house.  Without  was  the  murk  of  a 
winter's  dayj  a  dirty  mist  hung  in  the  air;  a  sullen 
rain  was  falling;  the  smoke-stained  laurels  growing 
by  the  window  dripped  and  shivered  under  the  down- 
pour. Within  was  silence  and  a  deeper  gloom.  The 
butler,  dressed  in  a  new  suit  of  black,  who  had  intro- 
duced him  to  his  victuals  and  then  left  him  to  help 
himself,  might  have  been  the  only  living  inmate  of 
the  house;  and  even  he  seemed  only  half  alive. 

Twice,  in  answer  to  questions  as  to  Mr.  Hooker's 
whereabouts — Was  he  in  his  bedroom?  Was  he  in 
the  library? — the  butler  had  replied  with  a  whis- 
pered "No,  sir."  These  were  the  only  words  he 
spoke,  uttered  in  a  tone  of  immense  responsibility, 
and  after  a  pause  for  deliberation,  as  though  the  neg- 
ative were  the  final  secret  of  the  universe,  revealed 
to  the  servants'  hall  by  the  funeral  of  yesterday, 

182 


AND  USES  HIS  DISCOVERY 

and  embodied  in  his  new  suit  of  black.  The  whole 
house  seemed  to  echo  the  whisper  j  it  was  the  voice 
of  the  place  J  the  voice  of  the  Everlasting  No,  Sirj 
the  walls  passed  it  on  to  the  furniture,  the  weather 
took  it  up  outside,  and  the  trees,  slowly  shaking  their 
heads  under  the  weight  of  the  rain,  confirmed  it. 
As  the  doctor  looked  round  the  dining-room,  with  its 
sumptuous  appointments  and  unnecessary  array  of 
chairs,  a  presentiment  came  over  him  that  he,  too,  had 
arrived  at  the  unreal  end  of  things.  He  ate  his 
breakfast  without  appetite.  His  boiled  egg  was  a 
negative  thing — tasteless,  phantasmal  and  difficult 
to  swallow. 

His  breakfast  over,  the  doctor  took  a  turn  through 
the  rooms,  hoping  to  encounter  Mr.  Hooker  here  or 
there.  All  was  chill,  melancholy,  sepulchral.  At 
certain  points  he  detected  an  odour  of  oak  varnish, 
as  though  a  new-made  coffin  was,  or  had  recently 
been,  in  the  house.  No  one  was  about  5  the  very 
servants  seemed  to  be  hiding  themselves.  The  doc- 
tor listened  for  indications;  he  could  hear  nothing 
but  the  drip  and  rustle  of  the  rain.  The  thick- 
carpeted  floors  were  a  mockery,  for  the  only  foot- 
steps in  the  place,  if  any,  were  the  footsteps  of 
Q:hosts. 

At  length  he  found  the  millionaire  standing  alone 
by  a  great  window  in  the  drawing-room,  looking  out 
upon  the  rain,  his  hands  behind  his  back.  At  one 
end  of  the  room  were  the  arum  lilies  and  azaleas 
which  yesterday  had  formed  a  screen  for  the  bier  of 
the  dead  woman.  In  neither  of  the  two  grates, 
which  were  of  burnished  steel,  after  the  mid-Vic- 
torian fashion,  was  there  any  fire.     The  room  was 

183 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

cold  and  the  odour  of  coffin  furniture  was  unmis- 
takable. 

That  Mr.  Hooker  was  suffering  under  a  severe 
reaction  was  obvious  to  the  doctor  at  a  glance.  All 
traces  of  yesterday's  exaltation  had  vanished.  The 
eyes  were  dull  and  tired,  the  face  pale  and  drawn, 
the  powerful  shoulders  tilted  forward,  and  the  great 
domed  head  seemed  to  have  shrunken.  But  the 
mouth  was  firm  and  the  square-set  obstinacy  of  the 
Hooker  breed  sat  upon  every  feature.  As  he  turned 
to  greet  the  doctor  he  drew  himself  erect.  He 
was  a  big  man  and  seemed  all  the  bigger  in  his 
loneliness. 

"My  dear  sir,"  said  the  doctor  in  a  sufficiently 
formidable  tone  of  authority,  "you  need  rest  and 
change.  Both  are  imperative.  A  voyage  round  the 
world,  for  example,  or  a  yachting  cruise  in  the  Medi- 
terranean. I  advise  the  Mediterranean,  with  a  medi- 
cal man  in  attendance.  You  must  quit  Smokeover 
without  delay.  Sea  air  and  sunshine  will  make 
another  man  of  you." 

Mr.  Hooker  made  a  gesture  of  impatience. 

"No,  sir!"  he  said,  with  the  emphasis  of  a  man  not 
to  be  trifled  withj  "no,  sir!  Such  things  are  not 
worth  discussing.  They  are  irrelevancies — the  con- 
ventional disguises  of  medical  ignorance — shallow 
stratagems  for  getting  patients  out  of  the  way  and 
escaping  further  responsibility.  Tell  these  things  to 
the  feeble-minded." 

Had  this  rebuff  been  administered  by  a  poorer 
patient  there  is  no  telling  what  the  doctor  would  have 
replied.  He  was  certainly  nettled,  but,  setting  the 
answer  down  to  the  morbid  irritability  consequent 

184 


AND  USES  HIS  DISCOVERY 

upon  a  sleepless  night,  he  contented  himself  with  a 
mild  rebuke. 

"I  see  you  have  no  high  opinion  of  medical  science. 
Is  not  that  a  little  ungrateful  in  the  circumstances?" 

"You  mean,"  said  Mr.  Hooker,  "that  medical 
science  has  just  saved  my  life.  But,  before  that,  it 
was  saved  by  Mr.  Rumbelowj  and  before  that  his 
was  saved  by  Miss  Wolfstone.  The  hospital  ship 
on  which  he  was  returning  after  his  wound  was  tor- 
pedoed, and  Miss  Wolfstone,  who  was  the  nurse  in 
charge,  rescued  him  at  great  peril  to  herself.  But  of 
course  you  know  the  story." 

"Everyone  knows  it,"  said  the  doctor.  "At  this 
moment  Miss  Wolfstone  is  the  talk  of  Smokeover." 

Mr.  Hooker  turned  a  searching  glance  on  his  com- 
panion's face.  "What  are  they  saying?"  he  asked 
sharply. 

"They  are  talking  about  her  connection  with  Rum- 
below.  The  circumstances  are  extraordinary,  and 
speculation  is  active." 

"Is  her  name  being  coupled  with  mine,  as  well  as 
with  Rumbelow's?"  asked  Mr.  Hooker. 

"Since  you  ask — yes." 

A  look  of  grim  determination  came  into  the  face 
of  Mr.  Hooker,  and,  almost  as  though  he  was  talking 
to  himself,  he  said: 

"In  future  they  will  couple  it  still  more  closely 
than  they  are  doing  now.  But  go  on,  doctor.  Is  this 
talk — are  these  rumours — discreditable  to  the  per- 
sons in  question?" 

"Gossip  is  seldom  otherwise,"  said  the  doctor,  who 
was  growing  uncomfortable  under  the  directness  of 
Mr.  Hooker's  interrogation.     He  was  casting  about 

185 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

for  a  change  of  subject,  but  the  other  gave  him  no 
time. 

"At  what  point  do  I,  personally,  stand  affected? 
What  inferences  are  being  drawn?  Are  people  say- 
ing that  I  am  out  of  my  mind?" 

The  doctor  had  been  dreading  this.  But  there 
was  no  going  back  now. 

"Well,  sir,"  he  said,  "the  fact  cannot  be  disguised 
that  you  are  causing  a  good  deal  of  perplexity  to 
many  of  your  friends.  In  particular,  your  action  in 
regard  to  the  nurse,  which  has  become  public  prop- 
erty, lends  colour  to " 

He  hesitated  for  the  next  phrase.  But  Mr. 
Hooker  did  not  wait  for  it. 

"What  has  that  to  do  with  Miss  Wolfstone?"  he 
asked. 

"Only  this — people  are  inclined  to  think  that  when 
a  man  has  done  one  anomalous  thing  he  will  prob- 
ably do  another." 

"They  show  extraordinary  prescience,"  said  Mr. 
Hooker,  "and  I  shall  not  disappoint  them.  But  these 
unfavourable  constructions  that  you  speak  of — are 
they  countenanced  by  the  medical  profession?  What 
do  they  think  of  what  I  have  done?" 

"They  condemn  it." 

"On  what  grounds?" 

"As  indefensible  from  every  point  of  view." 

"Name  one  of  them." 

Here  the  doctor  saw  an  opportunity  to  relieve  him- 
self of  something  he  had  on  his  mind  and  at  the  same 
time  to  bring  the  conversation  to  a  safe  distance  from 
the  point  of  danger  at  which  it  now  stood. 

"I  have  heard  your  munificence  to  the  nurse  de- 

186 


AND  USES  HIS  DISCOVERY 

scribed  as  a  false  emphasis,"  he  said.  "We  doctors 
naturally  think  of  alternatives.  You  are  probably 
aware,  for  example,  that  the  medical  side  of  our 
local  university  is  sorely  in  need  of  funds.  Had  you 
given  an  equal  sum  to  that  object,  you  would  not 
only  have  conferred  a  real  benefit  on  the  community, 
but  expressed  the  gratitude  you  owe  to  medical 
science  for  your  recovery.  For,  after  all,  Mr. 
Hooker,  it  was  not  the  nurse  who  saved  your  life." 

"You  have  entirely  mistaken  my  motives,"  said 
the  millionaire.  "Nothing  was  further  from  my  in- 
tention than  to  express  gratitude  for  my  recovery  j 
nor  to  confer  benefits  on  the  community.  My  rea- 
sons are  my  own,  and  to  me  absolutely  conclusive. 
As  between  you  and  me,  as  between  me  and  any  doc- 
tor in  Smokeover,  they  are  probably  incommunicable. 
But  to  carry  them  into  effect,  as  I  am  fully  resolved 
to  do,  it  is  essential  that  my  soundness  of  mind  should 
be  attested.  I  see  an  obstacle  in  my  way  and  am 
under  no  illusions  as  to  its  gravity.  You  understand 
that  I  am  about  to  make  my  Will.  Are  you  prepared 
to  certify  that  I  am  competent  to  do  so?" 

"Mr.  Hooker,"  said  the  doctor,  "you  have  chal- 
lenged plain  speech,  and  I  shall  use  it  in  answering 
your  question.  At  this  moment  I  doubt  if  any  medi- 
cal man  of  standing  in  Smokeover  would  do  what  you 
require.  The  matter  is  complicated,  professional 
feeling  runs  high,  and  the  unfavourable  impression 
of  which  I  spoke  has  gone  deep." 

"But  your  own  opinion  is  what?"  asked  Mr. 
Hooker. 

"I  decline  to  give  it.  The  matter  is  one  for  an 
independent  specialist.     You  place  me  in  a  difficult 

187 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

position,  sir,  and  under  the  circumstances  the  only 
possible  answer  is  what  I  have  just  given.  So  long 
as  this  strange  action  of  yours  stands  unrevoked,  with 
the  possibility  of  others  of  a  like  nature  to  follow, 
you  will  not  get  a  favourable  verdict  in  Smokeover. 
May  I  implore  you,  if  there  is  yet  time,  to  revoke 
it,  and  to  reconsider  the  whole  course  of  action  to 
which,  as  you  say,  it  is  leading  up." 

"Never!"  cried  Mr.  Hooker.  "My  resolution  is 
irrevocably  taken.  The  reasons  you  bring  against 
it  are  no  doubt  irrefragable  when  taken  by  them- 
selves— I  know  them  by  heart.  But  they  are  not  to 
be  taken  by  themselves.  They  are  part  of  a  larger 
system  of  ideas  and  of  customary  habits  of  thought 
which,  in  its  totality,  is  pernicious  and  false.  In 
human  affairs,  doctor,  whatever  is  irrefragable  is 
likely  to  be  untrue — and  let  the  fact  that  I  have  said 
so  be  remembered  when  the  question  of  my  sanity 
is  finally  determined.  For  the  rest,  I  shall  take  the 
choice  of  a  specialist  into  my  own  hands.  To-night 
I  am  expecting  my  lawyer,  and  I  shall  be  glad  if  you 
will  meet  him  here  and  tell  him  all  you  know.  And 
the  specialist  will,  if  possible,  arrive  to-morrow." 

The  doctor  was  at  the  end  of  his  resources.  All 
through  the  conversation  he  had  felt  himself  help- 
less against  the  impregnable  rock  before  him.  As  a 
last  effort  he  returned  to  his  original  method  of 
attack. 

"All  I  have  heard  from  you  to-day,  Mr.  Hooker," 
he  said,  "confirms  what  I  said  at  the  first.  In 
Heaven's  name,  take  yourself  in  hand.  Circum- 
stances have  thrown  you  back  on  yourself.  Leave 
Smokeover  at  once.     Get  out  of  this  atmosphere. 

188 


AND  USES  HIS  DISCOVERY 

There  is  no  other  means  to  break  up  your  self- 
centredness.    As  to  the  nurse " 

"Leave  her  aside,"  said  Mr.  Hooker,  in  tones  that 
intimated  the  end  of  the  interview,  "and  leave  me  to 
break  up  my  self-centredness  in  my  own  way." 

The  doctor  left  the  house  with  mixed  feelings, 
not  pleasant  on  the  whole.  On  the  one  hand  he  was 
glad  to  have  escaped  a  breach  with  his  wealthiest 
patient,  which  at  one  moment  had  seemed  imminent. 
But  he  resented  the  high-handedness  with  which  Mr. 
Hooker  had  conducted  the  interview.  He  had  the 
uncomfortable  and  even  humiliating  sense  of  being 
in  the  grip  of  a  will  far  stronger  than  his  own,  and 
against  which  he  could  make  no  professional  head- 
way. But  remembering  that  Mr.  Hooker  was  a 
multimillionaire,  he  frankly  forgave  him  all.  Was 
he  mad?  If  so,  who  was  sane?  The  doctor  looked 
back  at  the  gloomy  mansion,  and  the  genius  of  the 
place  seemed  to  answer  "Nobody." 

Within  an  hour  of  these  occurrences  new  and  yet 
more  sinister  rumours  had  begun  to  circulate  in 
Smokeover.  They  started  in  the  main  street,  spread 
rapidly  through  the  business  quarter,  penetrated  the 
Clubs,  and  were  telephoned  thence  to  the  suburbs. 
The  rumours  were  that  Mr.  Hooker's  car  had  been 
seen  to  draw  up  before  the  portals  of  Rumbelow, 
Stallybrass  &  Corker,  and  that  a  massive  gentleman 
in  a  fur  coat,  who  was  unquestionably  Mr.  Hooker 
himself,  ex-president  of  the  Society  of  Ethical  Cul- 
ture, and  sole  surviving  representative  of  a  venerated 
family  of  Quakers,  had  passed  into  the  interior  of 
that  flagitious  establishment — drawn  thither  by  what 

189 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

attraction  who  can  say?  Curiosity  was  a-tiptoe  and 
cynicism  was  in  its  glory.  Who  now  could  doubt 
that  Mr.  Hooker  was  mad?  Only  those  who  be- 
lieved him  wicked — of  whom  by  this  time  there  were 
many. 

Ai  this  point  the  Author  again  found  himself  in 
difficulties  with  the  competing  Voices  at  the  Bridge- 
head. There  were  at  least  three  of  them  uttering 
discordant  versions  of  what  happened  next.  The 
Author  waited  for  the  competition  to  subside y  and  in 
this  he  had  the  help  of  a  passing  thunderstorm,  which 
drowned  the  Voices  and  compelled  him  to  seek  shelter 
under  one  of  the  arches  of  the  Bridge.  Here  he 
passed  the  time  in  watching  the  River  of  For  get  ful- 
ness, whose  swift  and  gloomy  waters,  swirling  in  m'a- 
jestic  eddies,  fascinated  his  gaze  and  even  tempted 
him,  more  than  once,  to  plunge  in  and  m^ake  an  end. 
When  he  returned  to  his  post  the  Voices  seemed  to 
have  chosen  their  spokesman.  One  only  was  audible. 
In  note  and  accent  it  was  different  from  that  which 
had  spoken  before.  The  mode  of  utterance  was  more 
rapid,  and  a  further  peculiarity  was  that  now  and  then 
it  would  suddenly  stop  short,  as  though  to  reflect  on 
the  matter  in  hand,  sometimes  indulging  in  a  quiet 
laugh  over  what  it  had  just  narrated — tnuch  to  the 
annoyance  of  the  Author,  whose  fingers  were  numb 
with  the  cold  of  the  night,  and  growing  tired  with 
their  long  exercise.  He  was  impatient,  moreover, 
for  a  definite  answer  to  the  question — what  did  NLr. 
Hooker  do  with  his  money?    But  the  Voice  went  on: 

Mr.  Hooker  passes  through  the  great  swing-door 
of  the  Office,  and  perceiving  in  front  of  him  a  tail 

190 


AND  USES  HIS  DISCOVERY 

official  in  uniform  presents  his  card,  with  the  inquiry, 
"Is  Mr.  Rumbelow  within?" 

Mr.  Rumbelow  is  not  within,  but  the  Heads  of 
Departments  are  all  at  their  posts,  and  Mr.  Hooker 
is  assured  that  the  mention  of  his  name  will  instantly 
place  any  one  of  them  at  his  service. 

Mr.  Hooker  pauses  to  reflect.  As  yet  his  acquaint- 
ance with  the  organization  of  the  Firm,  and  with  the 
personnel  of  the  staff,  is  imperfect,  but  he  knows 
enough  to  make  an  intelligent  suggestion. 

"I  believe,"  he  says,  "that  one  of  the  Heads  is  a 
famous  psychologist?" 

"You  mean  Mr.  Hotblack,  sir,"  replies  the  offi- 
cial, "the  Head  of  the  Psychological  Department. 
Certainly,  sir.  Your  card  shall  be  sent  in  to  him  at 
once." 

Five  minutes  later  Mr.  Hooker,  comfortably 
seated  in  an  arm-chair  and  by  the  side  of  a  cheerful 
fire,  is  confronting  Mr.  Hotblack,  in  the  private 
office  of  that  highly  strung  but  ingenious  gentleman, 
whose  keen  and  radiant  eyes  are  examining  the  mil- 
lionaire as  though  they  would  anticipate  his  secret 
thoughts.  Mr.  Hooker's  face  presents  the  contrast 
of  a  benignant  placidity,  and  meets  the  penetrating 
gaze  of  the  psychologist  with  an  expression  which 
seems  to  say,  "All  the  psychology  in  the  world  will 
not  divert  me  one  hair's-breadth  from  my  purpose." 

"I  am  come  in  search  of  an  item  of  information 
which  I  believe  you  are  in  a  position  to  give  me," 
says  Mr.  Hooker. 

"The  resources  of  the  Firm  are  at  your  command, 
sir,"  replies  Mr.  Hotblack,  "and  I  can  assure  you 
that  in  the  matter  of  information  they  are  immense. 

191 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

But  before  we  proceed  to  business  may  I  say  that 
it  gives  me  peculiar  pleasure  to  meet  you?  Your 
name,  Mr.  Hooker,  is  honoured  in  this  Office.  The 
Chief  himself  has  mentioned  it  in  terms  of  venera- 
tion. He  rejoices  that  he  was  permitted  to  be  an 
instrument  in  preserving  your  life.  The  Chief,  sir, 
attaches  great  importance  to  such  things." 

To  this  Mr.  Hooker  makes  no  reply,  and  Mr. 
Hotblack,  mentally  noting  his  silence,  goes  on : 

"May  I  be  permitted  to  offer  you  the  congratula- 
tions of  the  Firm,  though  doubtless  they  would  come 
more  fittingly  from  Mr.  Rumbelow  himself?  We 
have  heard — who  has  not? — of  your  recent  munifi- 
cence to  the  nurse.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the 
Firm,  sir,  you  have  done  a  most  significant  deed — 
ideal  in  aim,  sportsmanlike  in  principle,  and,  I  have 
no  doubt,  thoroughly  businesslike  in  method." 

A  shade  of  annoyance,  as  of  a  man  who  dislikes  to 
be  praised,  passes  over  the  countenance  of  Mr. 
Hooker. 

"I  do  not  understand  you,"  he  says. 

"There  are  two  types  of  morality,"  replies  Mr. 
Hotblack,  "the  legalistic  and  the  sportsmanlike.  The 
legalistic  begins  with  the  highest  principles,  which 
deteriorate  in  application  and  become  progressively 
impure  the  further  they  advance  from  their  point 
of  origin — you  may  see  a  remarkable  example  of  this 
in  the  efforts  that  are  now  being  made  by  purists 
and  physiologists  to  deal  with  the  problem  of  sexual 
relations,  not  to  speak  of  the  Ten  Commandments 
themselves.  The  sportsmanlike  begins  in  the  com- 
mon soil  of  human  nature,  improves  with  each  fresh 
application,   and    finally    establishes    itself    on    the 

192 


AND  USES  HIS  DISCOVERY 

ground  of  absolute  validity.  Your  action  in  regard 
to  the  nurse,  sir,  belongs  to  this  type.  It  was  a  crea- 
tive deed,  and  contains  within  it  the  promise  of  a 
splendid  progeny." 

At  these  words  Mr.  Hooker's  countenance 
brightens,  annoyance  gives  place  to  eagerness,  and 
he  is  about  to  follow  up  Mr.  Hotblack's  remarks 
with  a  yet  more  pregnant  observation  of  his  own 
when  he  suddenly  recollects  himself  and  says: 

"The  action  of  mine  to  which  you  refer  is  not  un- 
connected with  the  business  which  brings  me  here 
to-day." 

"Let  us  proceed  to  that  at  once,"  says  Mr.  Hot- 
black. 

"I  have  heard,"  says  Mr.  Hooker,  "that  the  Firm 
has  frequent  occasion  to  investigate  the  mental  con- 
dition of  its  clients,  and  that  you  employ  experts 
for  the  purpose." 

"We  employ  many,"  returns  Mr.  Hotblack.  "In- 
deed they  constitute  the  most  important  section  of  our 
External  Staff.  In  the  cabinet  behind  you,  Mr. 
Hooker,  there  are  at  this  moment  thousands  of  tabu- 
lated reports,  in  a  dozen  languages,  on  the  mental 
condition  of  our  clients.  All  the  most  notable  per- 
sons, both  in  Europe  and  America,  have  been  put 
under  investigation.  They  are  investigated  as  indi- 
viduals and  as  groups.  And  I  may  tell  you,  as  a  point 
of  psychological  interest,  that  groups  composed  of 
perfectly  sane  individuals  are  often  condemned  by 
our  experts  as  hopelessly  insane  in  their  corporate 
mentality.  The  Reports,  I  assure  you,  make  sad 
reading.  In  one  of  those  drawers,  sir,  there  is  a  long 
list  of  lunatic  groups — it  is  the  Black  List  of  the 

193 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

Firm.  Indeed,  sir,  of  all  the  problems  for  which  I, 
as  chief  psychologist,  am  responsible,  this  is  by  far 
the  most  delicate  and  momentous.  A  matter  on 
which  the  Firm  has  enormous  experience." 

"Then  perhaps,"  says  Mr.  Hooker,  "you  can  fur- 
nish me  with  the  name  of  an  expert,  of  a  specialist, 
whom  I  can  summon  immediately  to  decide  in  a  diffi- 
cult case." 

Here  the  sharp  eyes  of  Mr.  Hotblack  become 
arrow-points  of  thought,  and  Mr.  Hooker  can  almost 
feel  them  darting  through  and  through  the  cortex 
of  his  brain. 

"I  conjecture,"  says  the  psychologist,  speaking 
with  great  rapidity,  "that  the  case  to  be  decided  upon 
is  your  ownj  that  your  munificence  to  the  nurse  has 
caused  doubts  of  your  sanity  among  the  ignorant; 
that,  nevertheless,  you  are  determined  to  follow  it 
up  with  other  deeds  conceived  in  the  same  sportsman- 
like spirit  j  and  that  the  way  is  blocked  for  the  mo- 
ment by  the  menace  of  a  legal  difficulty." 

"So  far  you  are  right." 

"Then  I  have  no  hesitation  in  recommending  you 
to  place  yourself  in  the  hands  of  Sir  William  Tim- 
bertree." 

"I  have  heard  of  him." 

"A  telephone  message  from  the  Firm  will  bring 
him  down  from  London  by  the  first  possible  train. 
His  fee  is  four  hundred  guineas  for  patients  intro- 
duced by  the  Firm,  five  hundred  for  others." 

"I  shall  summon  him  without  introduction,"  says 
Mr.  Hooker,  "if  you  can  assure  me  of  his  qualifica- 
tions." 

"His  record  attests  them,"  says  Mr.  Hotblack. 

194- 


AND  USES  HIS  DISCOVERY 

"You  may  remember,  sir,  that  when  the  war  broke 
out,  the  Chief  laid  before  the  Cabinet  a  plan  which 
would  infallibly  have  ended  it  in  five  weeks.  The 
Cabinet  dismissed  it  as  the  scheme  of  a  madman. 
Whereupon  Sir  William,  at  the  risk  of  his  great 
reputation,  publicly  took  up  cudgels  for  the  Chief, 
and  declared  from  his  seat  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons that  the  collective  mind  of  the  Cabinet,  judged 
by  the  standard  of  Mr.  Rumbelow's  intellectual 
powers,  was  on  a  level  of  imbecility  j  adding  that  on 
strictly  scientific  grounds  he  would  refuse  to  certify 
the  collective  sanity  of  any  Government  in  the 
world." 

"It  is  enough,"  says  Mr.  Hooker. 

"But  I  must  warn  you,"  continues  Mr.  Hotblack, 
"that  Sir  William's  personal  characteristics  may 
offend  you.  In  private  life  he  is  an  avowed  atheist, 
a  reputed  loose-liver,  a  user  of  foul  language  and 
intolerably  vulgar  in  his  manners.  Professionally 
he  is  a  mystic,  a  Puritan,  and  fanatically  devoted  to 
the  interests  of  his  patients.  He  never  begins  an 
operation  on  the  brain  or  the  spinal  cord  without 
invoking  the  Divine  blessing  on  the  knife  and  com- 
pelling his  assistants  to  join  him  in  prayer." 

"Give  me  his  address,"  says  Mr.  Hooker. 

As  the  millionaire  places  the  slip  of  paper  in  his 
pocketbook  and  rises  to  leave,  Mr.  Hotblack  takes 
out  his  watch. 

"I  perceive  it  is  one  o'clock,"  he  says.  "May 
I  suggest,  sir,  that  we  lunch  together  at  the 
Club?" 

To  which  Mr.  Hooker  assents  and,  having  sent 
off  a  telegram  in  his  own  name  to  Sir  William  Tim- 

195 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

bertree,  presently  walks  out  of  the  office  in  company 
with  Mr.  Hotblack. 

And  now  the  tongues  of  rumour  are  again  let 
loose.  First  they  report  that  Mr.  Hooker  and  Mr. 
Hotblack  are  lunching  together  in  the  Club  at  a 
table  for  twoj  next,  that  they  have  retired  to  a  quiet 
corner  in  the  smoking-room  and  are  closely  engaged 
in  conversation.  What,  in  Heaven's  name,  are  they 
saying?     The  sequel  will  show. 


196 


CHAPTER  NINE 
Mr.  Hotblack  Expounds  the  Beauty  of  Business 

NO  legislation."  Mr.  Hotblack  was  saying,  "no 
social  system  that  the  wit  of  man  can  devise, 
will  prove  effective  in  preventing  the  accumulation  of 
wealth  by  individuals.  Whatever  measures  society 
may  invent  for  checking  the  profiteer  can  always  be 
evaded  by  minds  endowed  with  certain  faculties,  and 
not  only  evaded,  sir,  but  captured  and  made  use  of 
for  defeating  the  very  purpose  they  are  intended  to 
serve.  A  daring  and  creative  mind,  like  Mr.  Rum- 
below's  for  example,  is  always  more  than  a  match  for 
any  system  of  repression  that  may  be  directed  against 
it.  The  Chief  knows  thisj  he  has  proved  it  over  and 
over  again.  If  a  set  contest  were  to  take  place  be- 
tween *the  will  of  society' — though  I  doubt  if  such 
a  thing  exists — between  *the  will  of  society'  and  the 
will  of  Mr.  Rumbelow,  I  should  not  hesitate,  as  a 
psychologist,  to  lay  the  odds  at  1 0  to  1  on  the  Chief. 
It  is  a  fortunate  thing  for  the  world,  sir,  that  the 
Head  of  the  Firm  is  a  friend  of  manj  were  it  other- 
wise one  might  well  tremble  for  the  future  of  the 
human  race." 

"One  trembles  in  any  event,"  said  Mr.  Hooker. 

"Rightly  so,"  answered  Mr.  Hotblack.  "The 
future  of  mankind  is  by  no  means  assured,  and  I  may 
tell  you,  in  confidence,  that  the  Firm  has  periods  of 

197 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

pessimism,  when  even  the  Chief  himself  wears  a  look 
of  trouble.  This  morning,  for  example,  we  have  re- 
ceived a  Report  from  the  Seven  Mighty  Men,  en- 
dorsed by  the  Head  Mathematician,  which  indicates 
that  the  odds,  at  the  moment,  are  in  favour  of 
impending  catastrophe  to  civilization.  But  Mr.  Rum- 
below,  sir,  has  not  quailed.  Immediately  after  read- 
ing the  Report  he  issued  a  general  instruction  to  the 
Heads  of  Departments  informing  them  that  the  en- 
tire resources  of  the  Firm  were  to  be  staked,  with  the 
odds  against  us,  on  averting  the  threatened  calamity. 
How  great  the  calamity  is  you  may  imagine  when 
I  tell  you  that  it  involves  the  destruction  of  Mr. 
Rumbelow  himself  and  of  all  that  he  stands  for. 
He  is  under  no  illusion  in  these  matters.  He  is  fully 
prepared  for  the  fate  which  has  been  meted  out  to 
all  the  greatest  benefactors  of  mankind.  Of  course 
he  is  aware  that  by  throwing  the  resources  of  the 
■Firm  into  the  lighter  scale  the  conditions  will  be 
altered  J  but  even  so,  the  odds  remain  heavily  against 
us." 

"The  spirit  of  all  this,"  said  Mr.  Hooker,  speak- 
ing with  some  emotion,  "the  spirit  of  all  this  moves 
me  deeply.  I  have  seen  with  my  own  eyes  the  self- 
devotion  of  which  Mr.  Rumbelow  is  capable  when 
the  odds  are  against  himj  indeed  I  owe  my  life  to  it. 
If  only  I  knew  more  of  the  operations  the  Firm  is 
engaged  in,  and  were  convinced  that  their  nature 
was  such  that  I  could  support  them,  I  would  throw 
in  my  lot  with  Mr.  Rumbelow  to-morrow." 

"It  would  be  a  splendid  consummation  to  a  noble 
life,"  cried  Mr.  Hotblack,  raising  his  voice  and 
dropping  his  cigar  in  his  excitement.     "But  I  must 

198 


MR.  HOTBLACK  EXPOUNDS 

warn  you,  Mr.  Hooker,  that  you  would  be  facing  the 
odds  of  financial  ruin.  They  are  two  to  one  against 
us." 

"If  they  were  twenty  thousand  to  one  I  would  face 
them,"  answered  Mr.  Hooker  with  equal  enthusiasm, 
"provided  I  stood  upon  honourable  ground." 

"Which  proves  that  you  are  a  sportsman  at  heart," 
replied  Mr.  Hotblack. 

At  this  point  of  the  conversation  there  was  a  notice- 
able stir  among  the  other  gentlemen  in  the  smoking- 
room.  They  had  already  drawn  their  chairs  as  near 
as  they  decently  could  to  the  corner  where  the  mil- 
lionaire and  the  psychologist  were  holding  their 
debate.  At  the  words  "twenty  thousand"  the  news- 
papers they  were  pretending  to  read  were  simultane- 
ously lowered,  and  the  smokers  looked  at  one  another, 
as  who  would  say,  "Just  what  we  expected." 

Mr.  Hotblack  noticed  the  movement,  and  pushing 
his  chair  into  a  position  which  brought  him  close  to 
Mr.  Hooker's  ear,  said,  "We  must  speak  lower. 
These  men  are  listening.  One  of  them  has  just  gone 
out,  and,  unless  I  am  much  mistaken  his  version  of 
what  we  have  been  saying  is  already  on  the  telephone. 
I  shall  indulge  him  a  little  further  when  he  comes 
back.  But  to  the  point,  Mr.  Hooker.  Before  ex- 
plaining the  operations  of  the  Firm,  may  I  ask  a 
question?  Your  action  in  summoning  Sir  William 
Timbertree — the  question  of  your  soundness  of 
mind — does  it  turn  on  certain  views  you  hold  as  to 
the  capacity  of  women  to  be  entrusted  with  the  dis- 
position of  wealth?" 

"I  have  said  as  much  already,"  answered  Mr. 
Hooker. 

199 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

"Thank  you.  I  wished  to  be  clear  on  the  point. 
For  it  so  happens — and  it  is  important  in  connexion 
with  what  I  am  about  to  tell  you — that  the  views  of 
Mr.  Rumbelow  as  to  the  functions  of  women  in  the 
coming  age  are  extremely  precise.  He  holds  that 
their  greatest  achievements  will  be  more  in  the 
economic  than  in  the  political  sphere.  As  earners, 
or  producers,  of  wealth  they  will  always  play  a  minor 
part  J  but  as  spenders  of  it,  as  directors  of  the  ends 
and  uses  for  which  wealth  is  employed — the  unsolved 
problem  of  the  industrial  age — their  power  and  in- 
fluence will  continually  increase.  Mr.  Rumbelow  is 
backing  this  tendency  to  the  uttermost.  At  this 
moment  he  has  in  the  Office  a  list  of  all  the  most 
capable  women  in  Smokeover,  in  the  preparation  of 
which  I  have  had  the  honour  of  assisting  him.  You 
would  be  surprised  to  learn  what  a  large  number 
remains,  even  after  the  most  rigorous  sifting  out." 

"On  the  contrary,"  replied  Mr.  Hooker,  "I  should 
not  be  surprised  in  the  least." 

"Ha!"  exclaimed  Mr.  Hotblack,  and  for  a  mo- 
ment he  looked  out  of  the  window,  with  the  air  of  a 
man  who  is  putting  this  and  that  together.  Then, 
checking  his  meditations,  he  broke  off  to  a  general 
observation. 

"In  the  scale  of  moral  values,  Mr.  Hooker,  as 
well  as  in  that  of  efficiency,  women  have  a  greater 
range  than  men,  both  upward  and  downward.  The 
types  are  more  varied  and  the  degrees  more  numer- 
ous. A  bad  woman  is  far  worse  than  a  bad  man  5  at 
the  common  level  she  is  still  his  inferior  j  but  above 
that  she  outstrips  him  and  reaches  a  summit  which  no 
man  can  attain,  until  at  the  highest  she  becomes  the 

200 


MR.  HOTBLACK  EXPOUNDS 

master-work  of  the  creative  mind.    A  spiritual  reli- 
gion should  worship  a  goddess,  not  a  god." 

"A  spiritual  religion  should  worship  the  spirit," 
interrupted  Mr.  Hooker. 

"  'Tis  the  same  thing,"  replied  Mr.  Hotblack. 

"I  agree,"  said  Mr.  Hooker.  "But  we  are  wan- 
dering from  the  point.  Tell  me — is  the  name  of 
Miss  Wolfstone  on  Mr.  Rumbelow's  list  of  capable 
women?" 

"It  stands  next  to  My  Lady's,"  said  the  psychol- 
ogist. "Apart  from  the  special  reason  Mr.  Rum- 
below  has  for  honouring  Miss  Wolfstone — for,  as 
you  know,  she  saved  his  life — he  regards  her  as  a 
woman  of  exceptional  power,  and  destined  to  leave 
her  mark  on  the  world.  Mr.  Hooker,  I  am  about 
to  declare  to  you  one  of  the  secrets  of  the  Firm,  which 
I  have  good  reason  to  believe  will  be  safe  in  your 
keeping.  The  Chief  has  determined  to  do  for  Miss 
Wolfstone  that  which  has  never  yet  been  done  for 
any  woman." 

"Perhaps  I  shall  anticipate  him,"  said  the  mil- 
lionaire. 

The  psychologist  turned  upon  his  companion  a 
glance  full  of  intelligence.  When  the  conversation 
was  resumed  the  cigars  of  both  men  had  become  ap- 
preciably shorter.  It  was  Mr.  Hotblack  who  broke 
the  silence. 

"Assuming,  sir,  that  you  have  settled  the  disposi- 
tion of  your  fortune  after  your  death,  the  problem 
remains  of  dealing  with  it  during  the  remainder  of 
your  life.  If  I  may  venture  a  bold  suggestion,  I 
would  advise  you,  earnestly  and  solemnly,  to  consult 
Mr.  Rumbelow." 

201 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

"I  have  thought  of  it,"  replied  the  millionaire. 
"But  you  must  understand,  Mr.  Hotblack,  that  in 
this  matter  I  intend  to  act  upon  my  own  initiative.  I 
shall  adopt  no  man's  ideas.  I  shall  avoid  all  cus- 
tomary modes  of  dealing  with  wealth,  which,  I  am 
persuaded,  are  based  on  a  profound  ignorance.  Cus- 
tom, as  Carlyle  says,  makes  dotards  of  us  all,  and  in 
this  matter  more  than  in  any  other." 

"An  act  of  will  has  no  value  unless  it  is  self- 
originated,"  said  the  psychologist  5  "in  fact,  is  not  an 
act  of  will  at  all.    Do  I  correctly  interpret  you?" 

"You  do." 

"Then  let  me  assure  you  that  by  consulting  Mr. 
Rumbelow  you  will  not  impair  the  independence  of 
your  own  decision.  You  will  reinforce  it.  The  more 
so  if  My  Lady's  influence  is  added  to  his.  Seek  her 
out,  Mr.  Hooker  J  seek  her  out,  I  implore  you! 
Whatever  you  undertake  she  will  transform  into 
music,  into  beauty,  into  joy." 

As  he  spoke  these  words  a  visible  change  passed 
over  the  countenance  of  Mr.  Hotblack.  It  was  as 
though  a  mask  had  fallen  off.  The  features  softened, 
they  shone  with  an  inner  light,  and  the  penetrating 
eyes  seemed  to  be  gazing  at  some  object  a  long  way 
off.  Then,  to  the  astonishment  of  Mr.  Hooker,  the 
psychologist  leaned  back  in  his  chair  and  slowly  re- 
cited the  following  verses: 

"O  Lady!  we  receive  but  what  we  give, 
And  in  our  life  alone  does  Nature  live: 
Ours  is  her  wedding-garment,  ours  her  shroud! 
And  would  we  aught  behold,  of  higher  worth 
Than  that  inanimate  cold  world  allowed 

202 


MR.  HOTBLACK  EXPOUNDS 

To  the  poor  loveless,  ever-anxious  crowd, 
Ah!  from  the  soul  itself  must  issue  forth 

A  light,  a  glory,  a  fair  luminous  cloud 
Enveloping  the  Earth — 

And  from  the  soul  itself  must  there  be  sent 
A  sweet  and  potent  voice,  of  its  own  birth, 

Of  all  sweet  sounds  the  life  and  element! 

"O  pure  of  heart!  thou  need'st  not  ask  of  me 
What  this  strong  music  in  the  soul  may  be! 
What,  and  wherein  it  doth  exist, 
This  light,  this  glory,  this  fair  luminous  mist. 
This  beautiful  and  beauty-making  power. 

Joy,  virtuous  Lady!     Joy  that  ne'er  was  given. 
Save  to  the  pure,  and  in  their  purest  hour, 

*'Life,  and  Life's  effluence,  cloud  at  once  and  shower, 
Joy,  Lady!  is  the  spirit  and  the  power 
Which,  wedding  Nature,  to  us  gives  in  dower 

A  new  Earth  and  new  Heaven, 
Undreamt  of  by  the  sensual  and  the  proud — 
Joy  is  the  sweet  voice,  Joy  the  luminous  cloud — 
We  in  ourselves  rejoice! 
And  thence  flows  all  that  charms  or  ear  or  sight. 

All  melodies  the  echoes  of  that  voice. 
All  colours  a  suffusion  from  that  light." 

"I  congratulate  you  on  the  rendering,"  said  Mr. 
Hooker,  "Your  training  as  a  man  of  business  has  left 
you  with  a  fine  sense  of  poetic  values." 

"A  business  training,"  replied  Mr.  Hotblack, 
"separates  us  from  the  poets  only  when  it  is  incom- 
plete.    But  when  business  has  her  perfect  work,  she 

203 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

brings  us  back  again  to  poetry  and  to  the  other  arts. 
In  the  same  way,  sir,  the  present  age  of  commercial- 
ism, in  which  the  great  singers  have  hung  up  their 
harps,  will  lead  on,  when  its  issues  are  complete,  to 
a  revival  of  poetry.  The  businesslike  method,  sir, 
is  a  beautiful  thing." 

"You  surprise  me,"  said  Mr.  Hooker.  "I  have 
heard  it  said  that  the  relationship  of  business  to  the 
fine  arts  is  not  affinity,  but  repulsion." 

"It  is  a  profound  error,"  answered  the  psy- 
chologist, "and  could  only  originate  in  minds  which 
understand  neither  business  nor  art." 

"You  would  not  allow  then,"  pursued  Mr. 
Hooker,  "that  the  general  ugliness  of  Smokeover,  of 
which  we  can  see  a  glimpse  out  of  that  window, 
accurately  reflects  the  nature  of  business?" 

"I  will  not  allow  it  for  a  moment,"  replied  the 
other.  "Smokeover,  sir,  is  unquestionably  an  ugly 
creation.  But  it  is  the  ugliness  of  a  caterpillar  wait- 
ing to  be  changed  into  a  gorgeous  butterfly.  When 
Mr.  Rumbelow  has  completed  his  work,  Smokeover 
will  emerge  as  glorious  as  Athens  j  not,  mark  you,  by 
abandoning  business,  but  by  becoming  thoroughly 
businesslike." 

"Then  is  she  not  thoroughly  businesslike  at  the 
present  moment?" 

"Far  from  it,  sir;  far  from  it!" 

Here  Mr.  Hotblack  paused  to  choose  his  words. 
His  face  wore  an  air  of  perplexity,  as  though  he 
found  it  difficult  to  make  intelligible  what  he  wanted 
to  say  next. 

"The  truth  is,"  he  resumed,  "that  business,  as 
Smokeover  carries  it  on,  is  under  alien  domination. 

204 


MR.  HOTBLACK  EXPOUNDS 

It  dances  attendance  on  the  unsportsmanlike  prin- 
ciples, the  mean  aims,  the  unbusinesslike  methods, 
which  characterize  the  general  misgovernment  o£ 
the  world.  Our  business  life  has  never  been  free 
to  develop  according  to  its  own  genius.  It  has  been 
suffered  to  develop  only  into  such  forms  as  were  con- 
venient to  the  blind  and  wicked  deities  which  for 
ages  past  have  filled  the  earth  with  strife,  bloodshed 
and  confusion.  Smokeover,  sir,  is  an  unconscious 
accessory  to  deeds  of  darkness  that  are  perpetrated 
beyond  its  ken.  The  ugliness  of  those  deeds  is  re- 
flected in  the  ugliness  we  see  out  of  that  window. 
This  sprawling  city,  with  its  foul  congestions,  the  ill- 
built  streets,  the  squalid  slums,  the  dismal  cemetery, 
the  tawdry  palaces,  the  hideous  statues,  the  vitiated 
atmosphere,  the  darkened  skies,  the  dirt,  the  noise, 
the  shabbiness — what  is  it  all  but  a  faithful  image  of 
the  international  muddle  whose  begotten  offspring  it 
is?  Now,  sir,  Mr.  Rumbelow  has  determined  that 
the  business  of  Smokeover  shall  be  liberated  from 
those  pernicious  entanglements,  set  upon  its  own  feet, 
and  placed  under  the  control  of  enlightened  business 
men.  When  that  has  been  accomplished  the  cater- 
pillar will  slough  off  its  ugliness  and  emerge  into 
beauty." 

It  is  probable  that  Mr.  Hooker  would  have  re- 
ceived all  this  with  complete  incredulity,  had  not  his 
mind  been  prepared  for  new  ideas  by  recent  trans- 
actions in  his  inner  experience.  Even  as  it  was,  a 
certain  measure  of  incredulity  asserted  itself.  His 
eye  glanced  round  the  room,  resting  first  upon  one 
and  then  upon  another  of  the  gentlemen  occupying 
the  arm-chairs.    Among  them  were  some  of  the  lead- 

20? 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

ing  business  men  in  Smokeover,  and  these  were  of 
many  types.  One,  who  was  different  from  all  the 
others,  had  the  face  of  a  wolf.  Indicating  this  gentle- 
man by  a  slight  movement  of  his  eyelid,  Mr.  Hooker 
asked : 

"Is  that  the  type  that  will  rule  the  future?" 

"No,  sir,"  answered  Mr.  Hotblack  with  great 
energy,  "it  is  not!  The  business  man  of  the  future 
will  not  be  a  devourer  of  widows'  houses!  He  will 
be  an  artist,  an  evoker  of  human  harmonies,  a 
prophet  of  the  ideal  bargain,  a  servant  of  his  own 
particular  muse!  And  for  that  very  reason  he  will  be 
all  the  more  a  business  man.  Twenty  thousand 
times  more,  sir — to  quote  your  own  figures!  And 
the  odds  will  be  heavily  in  his  favour." 

In  delivering  the  last  two  sentences  Mr.  Hot- 
black  had  raised  his  voice  from  an  energetic  whisper 
to  a  kind  of  shout.  He  repeated  the  words  several 
times,  somewhat  to  Mr.  Hooker's  surprise.  Finally 
he  brought  his  fist  down  on  the  table,  exclaiming  at 
the  same  time,  "Twenty  thousand,  no  less!"  Hav- 
ing said  which  he  relapsed  into  one  of  his  pensive 
moods. 

Mr.  Hooker  was  puzzled  to  read  the  expression 
on  the  psychologist's  facej  for  while,  as  always, 
deep  thought  sat  upon  his  brow,  a  certain  slyness 
seemed  to  be  dancing  at  the  corners  of  his  mouth. 
And  the  mystery  was  only  deepened  when  Mr.  Hot- 
black  suddenly  broke  the  silence  by  repeating  three 
lines  of  the  poem  he  had  just  quoted,  and  that,  too, 
in  a  manner  most  peculiar.  Mr.  Hooker  noticed  that 
the  first  two  words  of  the  quotation  were  pronounced 
in  a  voice  loud  enough  to  be  heard  by  the  whole 

206 


MR.  HOTBLACK  EXPOUNDS 

room,  while  the  rest  was  murmured  in  tones  so  low 
as  to  be  nearly  inaudible. 

"Joyy  Lady!  is  the  spirit  and  the  power 
Which,  wedding  Nature,  to  us  gives  in  dower 
A  new  Earth  and  new  Heaven." 

His  recitation  ended,  Mr.  Hotblack  glanced  round 
the  room  and  became  aware  that  the  gentleman  of 
the  lupine  countenance,  with  an  untouched  whisky- 
and-soda  on  the  table  before  him  and  the  Sporting 
Times  held  in  front  of  his  face,  was  closely  watch- 
ing him  out  of  the  corner  of  his  eye.  Meeting  the 
scrutiny  of  the  wolf  with  a  glance  of  scorn,  and 
leaning  towards  his  guest,  Mr.  Hotblack  said  in  a 
yet  lower  voice: 

"I  perceive,  Mr.  Hooker,  that  we  are  surrounded 
by  fools — by  men,  I  mean,  to  whom  all  poetry  is  a 
dead  letter  or  a  nuisance.  The  atmosphere  of  this 
place  is  depressing  j  already  I  feel  it  impeding  the 
cerebral  circulation,  and  clear  thought  is  becoming 
impossible.  We  are  overheard,  sir.  Let  us  return 
to  the  Office  immediately.  I  have  still  to  explain  the 
operations  of  the  Firm.  It  would  be  a  desecration  to 
speak  of  them  in  the  presence  of  men  such  as  that." 

When  they  had  passed  out  of  the  room,  which 
broke  into  a  buzz  of  conversation  the  moment  the 
door  was  closed,  Mr.  Hotblack  remarked: 

"Have  you  ever  observed,  sir,  that  in  these  days 
it  is  wellnigh  impossible  to  quote  a  dozen  lines  of 
first-rate  poetry  without  mentioning  the  name  of  a 
popular  race-horse?" 

Mr.  Hooker  confessed  that  he  had  not  observed 
it.    But  ten  minutes  later  a  score  of  telephones  were 

207 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

distributing  the  news  that  Mr.  Hooker,  on  the  advice 
of  Rumbelow,  Stallybrass  &  Corker,  had  backed  Joy 
Lady,  a  runner  in  the  Grand  National,  for  twenty 
thousand  pounds. 


208 


CHAPTER  TEN 
And  Mr.   Hooker  Beholds  the   Beauty  of  Woman 

ON  returning  to  Mr.  Hotblack's  private  office, 
they  were  confronted  by  an  agitated  clerk  with 
a  sheaf  of  telegrams  in  his  hand.  The  psychologist 
glanced  through  them. 

"They  must  wait,"  said  he,  "till  my  interview  with 
Mr.  Hooker  is  concluded.  Meanwhile  inform  the 
Staff  that  we  shall  all  be  working  overtime  to-day — 
probably  till  midnight." 

When  the  clerk  was  gone  Mr.  Hooker  said: 

"You  are  evidently  busy,  Mr.  Hotblack.  I  fear 
I  am  wasting  your  time." 

"Have  the  goodness  to  remain,  sir,"  said  Mr. 
Hotblack.  "Nothing  can  be  more  important  to  the 
Firm  than  that  you  and  I  should  understand  one 
another.  It  is  true  that  since  reopening  after  the 
war  we  have  been  doing  an  enormous  business.  At 
the  moment  we  are  overwhelmed.  We  must  in- 
crease our  capital  and  double  the  Staff.  But  now 
permit  we  to  explain  the  nature  of  the  business  on 
which  we  are  engaged." 

"That  is  what  I  am  anxious  to  learn,"  said  Mr. 
Hooker. 

"You  will  be  surprised  when  you  hear  it,"  re- 
plied Mr.  Hotblack.  "But  let  me  prepare  you  by 
saying  that  the  sportsmanlike  principle  which  guides 

209 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

our  operations  is  essentially  creative.  Its  nature  is 
to  transform  the  material  in  which  it  works  and 
continually  to  surpass  itself.  If  you  have  read  the 
works  of  Professor  Bergson  you  will  need  no  further 
explanation." 

"I  understand  what  you  mean." 

"Then  the  road  is  clear,"  said  Mr.  Hotblackj  "you 
shall  learn  at  once  what  the  operation  is  on  which 
Mr.  Rumbelow  has  determined  to  stake  the  entire 
resources  of  the  Firm,  with  the  odds  against  him  at 
two  to  one.  Last  week  he  summoned  the  Heads  of 
Departments,  and  the  Seven  International  Experts, 
who  are  to  formulate  in  detail  the  plan  of  our 
strategy,  and  gave  us  the  general  idea  of  the  new 
campaign.  Permit  me  to  read  what  he  said,  as  it 
was  taken  down  in  shorthand  from  his  own  lips." 

"You  will  have  an  attentive  listener,"  said  Mr. 
Hooker. 

Whereupon  Mr.  Hotblack  opened  a  locked  drawer 
in  one  of  his  cabinets,  drew  from  it  a  type-written 
document  and  without  further  delay  read  as  fol- 
lows: 

"  'The  modern  political  State,  gentlemen,  is  a 
fighting  institution,  an  instrument  in  the  struggle  for 
power.  Beneath  its  mask  of  industrialism,  which  has 
deceived  many,  it  remains  in  essence  what  it  was  in 
the  days  of  the  feudal  dynasties,  a  war-made  and 
war-making  mechanism,  the  only  difference  being 
that,  now,  it  makes  war  on  a  scale  and  by  methods 
that  are  an  outrage  to  the  fighting  instinct  itself,  in- 
herent as  this  is  in  human  nature,  and  one  of  its 
noblest  elements.  As  the  ultimate  function  the  State 
is  designed  to  perform,  all  else  in  the  long  run  must 

210 


MR.   HOOKER   BEHOLDS   BEAUTY  OF  WOMAN 

give  way  to  the  necessities  of  war,  its  inner  conditions, 
social,  economic  and  political,  having  gradually 
adapted  themselves  to  this  purpose  in  the  course  of 
the  war-making  centuries. 

"  'In  its  character  of  war-maker  the  State  has  con- 
trol of  the  entire  economic  resources  of  its  subjects, 
destroying  them  at  intervals  in  conflicts  with  its 
neighbours.  No  reforms  of  a  decisively  beneficent 
character  are  possible  so  long  as  that  control  exists. 
Both  in  the  production  and  in  the  distribution  of 
wealth  everything  now  hinges  on  the  need  of  main- 
taining its  easy  convertibility  to  the  uses  of  war. 
Every  sixpence  in  Smokeover  is  a  potential  cartridge, 
placed  where  it  can  be  easiest  impounded  by  those 
who  would  turn  it  into  one.  Smokeover  itself,  un- 
known to  its  inhabitants^  has  always  been  a  munitions 
factory  in  germ,  ready  to  be  converted  at  a  moment's 
notice  into  an  implement  of  the  war-making  power. 
The  process  by  which  some  of  its  citizens  have  re- 
cently grown  suddenly  rich  and  others  suddenly  poor 
is  a  mere  back-wash  from  the  general  flood  which  in 
four  years  has  wiped  out  half  the  wealth  of  the 
world.  All  that  is  characteristic  of  our  civilization, 
its  vices  and  miseries,  as  well  as  its  efficiency,  has  its 
origin  in  these  conditions. 

"  'Gentlemen,  it  has  now  become  the  mission  of 
Rumbelow,  Stallybrass  &  Corker  to  liberate  the 
economic  resources  of  mankind  from  subservience  to 
the  caprices  and  imbecilities  of  foreign  policy — to 
place  the  wealth  of  the  world  in  an  impregnable 
position,  when  it  is  no  longer  exposed  to  capture  and 
destruction  in  the  interests  of  war  and  of  the  irre- 
sponsible powers  which  cause  and  make  it.    In  other 

211 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

words,  we  shall  break  the  domination  of  the  political 
over  the  economic  interest  j  and  we  shall  do  this  as 
a  first  step  towards  liberating  the  spiritual  interest 
from  both. 

"  ^Modern  war  depends  in  the  last  resort  upon 
financial  conditions.  Whoever  controls  the  strings 
of  international  finance  controls  the  forces  which 
govern  the  origin  of  war  and  its  maintenance. 
Gentlemen,  we  shall  remove  that  control  from  the 
hands  of  the  politicians  and  from  the  malign  mecha- 
nism of  which  they  are  the  unconscious  agents.  We 
shall  do  this  by  no  revolutionary  methods,  but  by 
a  series  of  businesslike  operations  which  will  leave 
the  political  state  intact  for  other  purposes,  but  in- 
capable of  making  war. 

"  'Step  by  step  we  shall  build  up  an  independent 
system,  on  an  international  basis,  for  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  commerce  of  the  world  and  of  its  attend- 
ant finance,  avoiding  all  political  entanglements  and 
allowing  no  professional  politician  to  have  any  part 
in  the  direction  of  our  affairs. 

"  'We  shall  establish  the  method  of  collective 
bargaining  between  nation  and  nation,  so  that  the 
exchange  of  goods  between  them,  instead  of  being 
conducted  by  thousands  of  confused  and  disconnected 
transactions,  as  it  now  is,  will  be  effected  in  a  com- 
paratively small  number.  Our  Mathematical  De- 
partment has  already  worked  out  a  complete  scheme 
for  this  purpose,  which  could  be  put  into  operation 
to-morrow. 

"  'Involved  in  this  is  the  establishment  of  an  inter- 
national bank  and  of  an  international  currency.  The 
bank  will  cover  the  whole  network  of  our  operations 

212 


MR.   HOOKER   BEHOLDS   BEAUTY  OF  WOMAN 

with  an  adequate  system  of  credit  scientifically  con- 
trolled. The  currency  will  be  valid  for  all  trans- 
actions conducted  under  the  seal  of  the  Firmj  it  will 
gradually  supersede  the  confused  and  debased  cur- 
rencies now  in  usej  and  by  correlation  with  the  sys- 
tem of  collective  bargaining  will  abolish  the  whole 
problem  of  monetary  exchange. 

"  *As  collective  bargaining,  carried  on  by  inter- 
national currency  and  backed  by  international  credit, 
gradually  extends,  the  Customs  barriers  set  up  be- 
tween nations  will  fall  down,  and  universal  free 
trade  will  follow  automatically. 

"  ^Such  is  our  general  plan  of  campaign.  But  our 
attack  upon  the  problem  of  international  finance  will 
have  for  its  immediate  objective  a  point  in  direct 
line  with  the  historical  character  of  the  Firm. 

"  *Our  first  operation,  the  growing  point  of  the 
whole  undertaking,  will  consist  in  the  application  of 
the  gambling  method  in  its  most  highly  developed 
and  scientific  form — that,  namely,  of  Insurance 
against  Risk.  Our  Insurance  Department,  on  which 
the  finest  talent  in  the  Firm  has  long  been  concen- 
trated, will,  so  to  speak,  lead  the  attack.  We  shall 
underpin  the  entire  structure  of  industrial  civiliza- 
tion with  an  elastic  but  infrangible  system  of  Mutual 
Insurance,  in  which  the  interests  of  all  nations  will 
be  so  co-ordinated  but  no  injury  can  be  inflicted  on 
any  part  without  being  shared  by  the  organism  as  a 
whole.  To  the  citizens  of  the  twenty-seven  countries 
where  our  Branches  are  already  established  we  shall 
offer  the  means  of  insuring  themselves  against  the 
dangers  inherent  in  the  war-making  State.  They  will 
insure  their  cities  against  bombardment  from  land, 

213 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

sea  or  airj  their  commerce  against  blockade  j  their 
mercantile  marine  against  destruction  j  their  goods 
against  confiscation,  whether  by  taxation  or  loan  3 
their  lives  and  their  sons'  lives  against  death  or 
mutilation  in  battle.  In  addition  to  that  they  will 
insure  against  the  capricious  violence  of  nature — 
against  earthquakes,  famine,  pestilence,  storm  and 
other  catastrophes. 

"  ^Before  many  years  have  elapsed  we  shall  have 
accumulated  a  vast  and  stable  fund,  under  inter- 
national trusteeship,  administered  in  the  name  of 
Rumbelow,  Stallybrass  &  Corker.  In  this  fund  the 
interests  of  all  nations  will  be  so  combined  that  not 
a  life  can  be  sacrificed,  a  house  bombarded,  a  ship 
sunk,  a  sovereign  spent  on  powder  and  shot  without 
the  entire  comity  of  nations  becoming  jointly  respon- 
sible for  the  damage.  Needless  to  say  war  will  be 
impossible. 

"  'During  the  transition  period,  when  economic 
control  is  gradually  passing  from  the  war-making 
powers  into  the  hands  of  the  Firm,  there  will  be 
dangers  to  be  guarded  against.  The  International 
Fund  will  have  to  be  protected  from  pillage,  in 
whole  or  in  part,  by  any  predatory  State  that  may 
covet  its  vast  resources.  To  meet  this  danger  our 
assets  will  be  given  the  utmost  mobility,  so  that  they 
can  be  rapidly  transferred  from  threatened  points 
to  places  of  safety.  They  will  be  so  distributed  over 
a  world-wide  field  of  investment,  or  capable  of  being 
so  distributed,  as  to  be  virtually  inaccessible  to  the 
government  of  any  single  state.  Any  cupboard  that 
may  be  attacked  will  be  automatically  emptied  the 
moment  the  burglars  appear  upon  the  scene. 

214 


MR.   HOOKER   BEHOLDS   BEAUTY   OF  WOMAN 

"  *These,  gentlemen,  are  the  problems  on  which 
you  will  now  proceed  to  concentrate  your  high  gifts, 
both  in  severalty  and  in  combination.  When  your 
plans  are  complete,  the  entire  organization  of  the 
Firm,  with  its  world-wide  ramifications,  its  immense 
resources  of  brain  power  and  expert  knowledge,  will 
be  flung  unreservedly  upon  the  hazard,  in  the  fer- 
vour of  that  sportsmanlike  tradition  which  is  at  once 
our  glory  and  our  inspiration.'  " 

Mr.  Hooker  listened  to  all  this,  as  he  had 
promised,  with  a  profound  and  rapt  attention.  More 
than  once  he  had  been  on  the  point  of  interrupting 
the  reader,  and  could  hardly  restrain  himself,  at  a 
certain  passage,  from  starting  from  his  chair  j  inter- 
jecting, however,  an  emphatic  approval  which  Mr. 
Hotblack  had  not  overlooked. 

When  the  reading  was  over  he  remained  for  some 
minutes  immersed  in  thought,  and  then,  like  a  man 
weighing  his  words,  said  slowly: 

"Mr.  Hotblack,  the  man  who  could  show  us  how 
the  economic  and  the  spiritual  interests  of  mankind 
may  be  freed  from  their  present  entanglement  with 
the  political  system  would  be  the  greatest  benefactor 
the  world  has  seen  for  many  ages.  First  he  must 
disentangle  them  5  but  then,  mark  you,  he  must 
show  how  the  three  interests  are  to  be  co-ordinated 
in  a  new  synthesis." 

"Mr.  Rumbelow  will  do  both!"  cried  Mr.  Hot- 
black. 

"I  have  often  reflected  on  these  things,"  con- 
tinued Mr.  Hooker.  "I  have  been  reflecting  upon 
them  for  years.  And  this  is  the  conclusion  I  have 
reached:  that  the  double  task  I  have  just  mentioned 

215 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

was  beyond  the  wit  of  man,  and  that  nothing  short 
of  some  immense  catastrophe  would  detach  the 
spiritual  and  the  economic  interest  from  their  present 
dependence  on  war-making  conditions.  At  one  time 
it  seemed  likely  that  the  recent  war  was  the  catas- 
trophe in  question.  But  things  have  turned  out  far 
otherwise.  The  chains  which  bind  the  spiritual  and 
the  economic  interests  to  the  dangerous  wheels  of 
the  political  machine  have  not  been  broken  but  riveted 
anew.  For  ages  to  come  the  chief  task  of  industrial 
civilization  will  be  to  pay  off  the  debts  of  the  last 
v/ar  and  to  maintain  the  system  which  will  inevi- 
tably lead  to  another.  There  was  a  time  when  I 
believed,  in  common  with  many  others,  that  the  es- 
tablishment of  universal  free  trade  would  achieve 
the  end  in  view.  Since  then  I  have  learnt  to  my 
sorrow  that  political  idols,  to  which  everything  else 
has  to  be  sacrificed,  will  not  suffer  it  to  be.  But  for 
this  I  would  devote  my  entire  fortune,  at  this 
moment,  to  a  world-wide  propaganda  in  favour  of 
universal  free  trade." 

"Would  it  interest  you,  sir,"  asked  Mr.  Hotblack, 
"to  learn  Mr.  Rumbelow's  views  on  this  subject?" 

"It  would,"  said  Mr.  Hooker,  "for  I  have  not 
altogether  lost  the  hope  I  once  had  in  this  direction. 
You  must  remember,  Mr.  Hotblack,  that  among  the 
Quakers,  from  whom  I  come.  Free  Trade  is  a  tradi- 
tion. My  great-grandfather  discussed  it  with  Dr. 
Johnson.  My  grandfather  was  mobbed  in  Bristol 
for  advocating  it  after  the  Napoleonic  wars.  My 
father  was  one  of  Cobden's  earliest  friends.  When 
I  studied  economic  science  in  Cambridge  years  ago 
my  father  was  terrified  lest  I  should  be  led  astray, 

216 


MR.   HOOKER   BEHOLDS   BEAUTY   OF   WOMAN 

and  gave  me  a  solemn  charge,  shortly  before  his 
death,  never  to  betray  the  cause.  *It  will  draw  the 
dragon's  teeth,'  he  saidj  'it  will  make  wars  impos- 
sible.'   But  let  me  hear  Mr.  Rumbelow's  views." 

"They  coincide  with  your  own,"  replied  Mr.  Hot- 
black.  "You  must  know,  sir,  that  whenever  the 
Chief  offers  an  opinion  on  an  important  subject,  I 
make  a  note  of  his  very  words.     Here  they  are." 

Taking  a  note-book  from  his  pocket,  Mr.  Hot- 
black  consulted  the  lettered  index,  found  the  place 
and  began  to  read: 

"  ''The  Quakers  have  been  essentially  right  in  most 

things '      Pardon    me,   sir,   this    is    the    wrong 

passage." 

"Go  on,  I  pray  you,"  said  Mr.  Hooker  j  "I  wish 
to  hear  the  rest  of  it." 

*'  ^The  Quakers  have  been  essentially  right  in  most 
things. .  They  have  preserved  the  original  impulse 
of  the  Christian  religion,  for  which  they  have  paid 
the  price  in  becoming  one  of  the  smallest  of  the  sects. 
In  trade  especially  they  have  proved  themselves 
genuine  sportsmen,  always  giving  the  other  party  to 
the  bargain  a  fair  run  for  his  m^oney.  My  Lady  and 
I  have  often  been  tempted  to  join  them?  " 

As  Mr.  Hotblack  read  this  out  a  dark  suspicion 
flung  its  shadow  across  the  mind  of  the  millionaire. 
Was  the  man  before  him  an  artful  villain?  He  re- 
membered how  he  had  once  asked  himself  the  same 
question  about  Rumbelow,  and  that  an  hour  later  the 
bookmaker  had  saved  his  life.  In  an  instant  his 
generous  soul  dismissed  the  thought  j  and  Mr.  Hot- 
black  went  on: 

"Here  is  the  passage  about  Free  Trade.     I  find, 

217 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

after  all,  that  it  runs  continuously  with  what  I  have 
just  read  about  the  Quakers. 

"  ^If  the  folitkians  who  made  the  recent  'peace 
had  struck  decisively  for  universal  free  trade^  they 
might  have  put  the  rest  of  their  da?nned  treaty' — 
observe  the  careful  choice  of  language,  Mr.  Hooker 
— Hhe  rest  of  their  damned  treaty  on  the  fire.  But 
nothing  decisively  beneficent  will  ever  originate  in 
that  quarter?  " 

"The  politicians  do  their  best  with  the  machinery 
they  have  to  work,"  said  Mr.  Hooker,  "and  I  greatly 
dislike  the  harsh  judgments  that  are  directed  against 
them.  But,  if  this  is  what  Mr.  Rumbelow  means,  I, 
too,  believe  that  the  machinery  itself  is  radically 
unfit  for  serving  the  major  interests  of  mankind. 
The  political  bottle,  Mr.  Hotblack,  is  not  made  for 
the  wine  of  moral  idealism.  It  bursts  under  the 
pressure. 

"Permit  me,  as  a  psychologist,  to  amend  the 
figure,"  replied  Mr.  Hotblack.  "The  political  bottle, 
sir,  is  made  of  the  skin  of  a  highly  pachydermatous 
animal  j  it  does  not  burst,  but  blows  the  idealism 
back  into  the  face  of  the  unfortunate  idealist.  Any- 
how, men  are  losing  faith  in  it.  The  worship  of  the 
Bottle,  which,  as  you  know  well,  Mr.  Hooker,  has 
displaced  all  other  forms  of  religion  in  our  Western 
civilization,  is  rapidly  becoming  a  discredited  cult. 
Consider  what  is  happening  in  Smokeover  itself. 
Here  are  the  politicians  urging  us  in  accents  of 
desperation  to  ^produce  more,'  as  the  only  alternative 
to  economic  ruin.  But  Smokeover  will  not  respond., 
Production  steadily  falls  off.  Why?  Well,  sir,  for 
fifty  years  before  the  war  Smokeover  had  been  *pro- 

218 


MR.    HOOKER   BEHOLDS   BEAUTY   OF   WOMAN 

ducing  more.'  But  what  has  become  of  'the  more' 
it  produced?  Most  of  it  has  been  blown  up  on  the 
battlefield  and  the  rest  has  made  fortunes  for  men 
like  yourself.  What  motive  can  men  have  for  sup- 
porting a  system  which  disposes  of  the  fruits  of  their 
toil  in  this  manner?" 

As  Mr.  Hotblack,  incautiously  yielding  to  the 
current  of  his  ideas,  pronounced  the  last  sentences, 
Mr.  Hooker  winced  visibly j  and  the  psychologist 
was  casting  about  for  an  effective  mode  of  making 
amends  when  the  door  opened,  and  Mr.  Rum- 
below,  accompanied  by  My  Lady,  walked  into  the 
office. 

There  was  a  moment  of  surprise,  of  tension,  of 
tentative  adjustment  to  new  conditions,  as  when  the 
blinds  are  thrown  up  in  a  darkened  room,  or  the  mist 
breaks  on  a  mountain  top,  or  an  army  is  ordered  to 
take  a  new  front,  or  a  sailor  losing  his  landmark  has 
suddenly  to  find  his  bearing  by  the  stars,  or  as  when 
a  soul  released  from  the  body  is  wondering  what  has 
happened  and  where  it  is. 

In  a  few  seconds  the  transition  was  effected,  the 
four  figures  standing  motionless  and  silent  mean- 
while j  each  keenly  conscious  of  the  other's  presence, 
but  unconscious  of  itself:  My  Lady  wonderful, 
radiant,  self-luminous,  a  pure  essence  diffused 
through  the  roomj  at  her  side  the  Chief,  a  princely, 
superstitious  adventurer,  a  leader  in  attack  j  before 
him  Mr.  Hooker,  erect,  Quaker-like,  responsible,  an 
image  of  moral  worth,  a  master  of  menj  behind  him 
the  psychologist,  alert,  sagacious,  loyal  j  and,  around 
them  all,  the  office  furniture,  the  desks,  the  cabinets, 
the  pigeon-holes,  the  shelves,  the  typewriter,  and 

219 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

the  telephone — the  mechanism  of  business,  the  ap- 
paratus of  finance. 

Once  before  Mr.  Hooker  had  seen  My  Lady's 
face,  but  not  clearly  nor  in  the  light  of  day.  Now, 
too,  she  was  dimly  seenj  for  the  moment  he  beheld 
her  a  mist  gathered  in  his  eyes.  Joy  and  pain  ran 
together  into  one  experience:  the  joy  of  beholding 
an  immortal  thing,  the  pain  of  a  poignant  contrast 
between  the  immortal  presence  and  its  corruptible 
setting  j  the  two  interpenetrating  one  another  and 
forming  in  their  union  a  third  emotion  for  which 
there  is  no  name.  It  was  an  astonishment,  nay,  a 
shock. 

My  Lady  was  the  first  to  speak,  and  as  she  spoke 
the  tension  was  released,  the  difficulty  removed,  the 
transition  completed  and  a  way  opened  for  free  in- 
tercourse. 

"Dear  Mr.  Hooker,"  she  said,  "you  have  been  In 
great  tribulation.  We  wish  you  to  know  that  you 
have  friends  who  love  you." 

The  mist  in  his  eyes  became  great  drops  and  these, 
rolling  down,  were  the  only  answer  he  made  to  My 
Lady's  words.    He  turned  to  the  Chief. 

"Let  me  thank  you  for  saving  my  life.  There  was 
a  link  forged  between  us  that  night.  It  will  last. 
I  am  glad  to  have  lived  if  only  to  hear  what  My 
Lady  has  just  said." 

Mr.  Rumbelow  grasped  the  hand  of  the  million- 
aire, but  the  reply  came  from  My  Lady, 

^^Have  not  we  three  stood  together  at  the  ■point 
where  life  joins  hands  with  death  and  the  worst 
passes  into  the  best?" 

With  a  dignity  that  became  him  well,  Mr.  Hooker 

220 


MR.   HOOKER   BEHOLDS   BEAUTY  OF   WOMAN 

lifted  the  fine  hand  of  My  Lady  and  kissed  it  like 
a  courtier  of  old. 

She  turned  upon  him  a  smile  that  was  all  radiance. 

"We  began  well,"  she  said. 

"We  shall  end  better,"  he  replied. 

Mr.  Hotblack  was  standing  in  the  background, 
deep  in  thought.  "This,"  he  was  reflecting,  "is  both 
a  beginning  and  an  end.  Were  all  revealed  that  the 
present  moment  contains,  were  the  promise  of  it 
suddenly  expanded  into  the  fulfilment,  no  one  would 
ask  any  more  what  Mr.  Hooker  will  do  with  his 
money.     His  problem  is  solved." 

Up  to  the  last  word  spoken  the  Voice  of  the 
"Legend  had  shown  no  signs  of  weariness  or  failure, 
rather  gathering  strength  as  it  went  along.  But 
now  it  abruptly  stopped.  Was  the  Legend  at  an  end? 
Or  was  the  Voice  merely  pausing  as  it  had  done  so 
of  ten  y  to  reflect  upon  the  last  turn  of  its  story?  The 
Author  was  in  doubt.  He  rubbed  his  cold  and 
stiffened  fingers,  musing  deeply  the  while  on  what 
he  had  just  heard;  and  as  he  did  so  certain  memories 
were  awakened  which  m^oved  him  greatly.  An  ejacu- 
lation must  have  escaped  him,  or  perhaps  it  was  a 
sighy  or  it  may  have  been  a  tear.  But  whatever  it 
was  the  Voice  seemed  to  observe  it,  and  suddenly 
went  on,  not  rapidly  as  before,  but  slowly,  as  the 
manner  of  the  Immortals  is  when  speaking  of  their 
own  business. 

Mr.  Hooker's  well-spent  life  had  been  devoted, 
in  essentials,  to  the  pursuit  of  the  True  and  to  the 
service  of  the  Good.    With  Beauty,  the  third  of  the 

221 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

immortal  Sisters,  his  acquaintance  hitherto  was 
limited  and  incidental.  Born  in  an  age  which  looks 
upon  Beauty  as  an  adornment,  and  in  no  sense  a 
necessity  of  existence,  and  in  a  land  where  those  who 
accord  it  divine  honours  are  apt  to  be  made  a  mock 
of,  he  so  far  shared  the  characteristics  of  his  genera- 
tion as  to  be  untroubled  by  the  presence  of  the  ugly. 
Like  many  another  rich  man  in  Smokeover,  he  lived 
in  an  exceptionally  ugly  house,  and  was  indifferent  to 
its  ugliness.  The  Ethical  Society  over  which  he 
had  presided  did,  indeed,  from  time  to  time  offer 
lectures  to  the  public  on  the  relation  of  Art  to  this, 
to  that  and  to  the  other;  but  not  all  the  gentlemen 
who  gave  these  lectures  were  either  lovers  of  the 
Beautiful  themselves  or  causes  of  its  being  loved  by 
other  people.  Mr.  Hooker,  who  listened  to  the 
lectures  with  great  attention,  was  roused  by  one  of 
them  to  buy  a  large  number  of  pictures,  a  thing 
which  had  hardly  occurred  to  him  before;  but  they 
were  not  very  good,  he  seldom  looked  at  them,  his 
attention  being  preoccupied  by  what  most  men  con- 
sider the  weightier  matters  of  the  law.  He  was  one 
of  those  who  can  live  without  beauty  or  the  love  of 
it,  unaware  that  under  these  conditions  things  are 
only  half  seen,  life  only  half  lived,  deeds  only  half 
done.  He  knew  of  course  that  it  was  better  to  hear 
the  lark  sing  than  the  mouse  squeak;  better  to  walk 
in  a  forest  of  trees  than  in  a  forest  of  chimneys, 
better  to  inhale  the  fragrance  of  roses  in  his  garden 
than  the  stench  of  burning  lubricants  and  the  fumes 
of  petrol  in  the  Smokeover  streets.  But  the  differ- 
ence between  the  ugly  and  the  beautiful  was  not 
vital:  it  touched  no  essential  value,  and  was  by  no 

222 


MR.   HOOKER   BEHOLDS   BEAUTY  OF  WOMAN 

means  to  be  compared  to  the  difference  between  right 
and  wrong. 

There  is,  however,  one  manifestation  of  the 
Beautiful,  and  that  a  supreme  one,  to  which  mankind, 
even  in  ages  the  most  sordid,  has  never  been  indif- 
ferent. Whether  writers  on  "yEsthetics"  have  ever 
noticed  the  fact  or  not,  and  most  of  them  seem  to 
have  overlooked  it,  there  is  little  doubt  that  the 
highest  and  purest  form  of  Beauty  revealed  to  the 
eye  of  sense  is  that  which  may  be  seen  in  the  face  of 
a  beautiful  woman.  Here  the  soul  of  Beauty  be- 
comes incarnate  and  displays  its  power,  mightier  than 
death,  more  terrible  than  the  sword.  In  this  form, 
at  all  events.  Beauty  is  still  acknowledged  as  a  neces- 
sity of  human  life  and  not  as  a  mere  adornment 
whose  presence  or  absence  makes  no  vital  difference. 
Provided  everybody  were  given  his  "rights,"  a  world 
without  Art  would  present  no  great  difficulty  to 
the  mass  of  your  voters,  agitators  and  electioneering 
politicians,  nor  would  it  be  a  nightmare  to  some  of 
your  moralists  j  and  a  world  cut  up  into  half-acre 
allotments,  canopied  by  smoke,  where  the  hooting  of 
motors  never  ceased  and  the  glare  of  their  head- 
lights was  never  extinguished,  where  the  larks  were 
all  served  up  on  toast  and  the  birds  of  Paradise  all 
killed  for  their  feathers,  could  be  borne  by  most  of 
you — if  only  the  Clubs  v/ere  comfortable,  the  news- 
papers piquant,  the  cinemas  attractive,  the  publie- 
houses  well  warmed  and  the  beer  good.  But  a 
world  without  beautiful  women  would  be  intoler- 
able to  everybody,  and  most  intolerable  to  the  women 
themselves.  The  presence  of  beauty  in  this  form  is 
never  treated  as  a  mere  addendum  to  the  values  of 

223 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

life,  but  always  as  part  of  their  essential  constitu- 
tion. 

Do  you  say  that  this  solitary  exception  to  the  gen- 
eral indifference  cannot  be  set  down  to  a  love  of  the 
Beautiful  for  its  own  sake?  The  point  is  doubtful, 
but  may  be  granted  for  the  sake  of  argument.  The 
beauty  of  women  is  assuredly  one  of  the  chief  perils 
that  beset  your  pilgrimage  through  time.  It  marks 
the  point  where  the  road  to  heaven  intersects  the 
road  to  hell,  but  without  any  clear  intimation  or 
legible  finger-post  set  up  at  the  parting  of  the  ways 
to  determine  which  is  which  j  and  many  there  be  that 
go  astray  when  they  come  to  it.  Yet  to  keep  the 
love  of  beauty  alive  on  any  terms,  in  a  world  where 
so  many  forces  are  conspiring  to  destroy  it,  is  some- 
thing gained  j  and  were  this  all  you  owed  to  women 
you  would  still  owe  them  much.  As  Dante  bore 
witness,  the  beauty  of  a  woman  may  become,  to  the 
beholder  whose  vision  is  uncorrupted,  the  passport 
into  a  world  of  absolute  and  eternal  values.  Such  a 
vision,  unmingled  with  carnal  desire,  is  a  spiritual 
experience,  as  pure,  as  profound,  as  long  lasting  as 
any  that  is  accorded  to  the  soul  of  man. 

It  had  come  to  Mr.  Hooker.  Like  the  lightning 
which  shines  from  the  one  part  of  heaven  to  the 
other,  at  an  hour  when  no  man  expects  it,  Beauty 
had  suddenly  unveiled  herself,  and  Mr.  Hooker, 
gazing  upon  her  face,  saw  his  past  interpreted  and 
knew  beyond  gainsaying  that  all  was  well. 

A  dim  light  was  breaking  over  SmokeoveVy  the 
dawn  was  coming  and  the  Voice  grew  faint.  For 
some  time  longer  it  continued  to  muttery  but  the 

224 


MR.    HOOKER   BEHOLDS   BEAUTY   OF   WOMAN 

Author  could  catch  only  brief  and  broken  fragments 
of  ijchat  it  said.  He  heard  the  name  of  Margaret 
Wolf  stone  repeated  several  tinieSy  of  Billie  Smithy 
and  of  another  fei'son^  a  Professor^  the  rest  of  whose 
name  the  Voice  see^ned  unable  to  pronounce.  He  is 
not  sure  that  the  Voice  which  sfoke  these  names  was 
that  which  had  told  him  the  Legend  of  the  Mad  Mil- 
lionaire. It  may  have  been  another.  The  stir  of 
Smokeover  rousing  itself  for  the  day^s  work  was 
making  it  hard  to  distinguish  these  subtler  sounds^ 
and  the  Author  was  on  the  "point  of  closing  his  booky 
with  a  disappointed  sense  that  the  Legends  were  in- 
completey  when  a  third  Voice,  different  from  any 
he  had  heard  before,  said  quite  distinctly: 

^^Try  the  other  Bridges. ^"^ 

Next  night  the  Author  posted  himself  at  another 
Bridge,  hard  by  the  spot  where  the  Smokeover  High 
School  for  Girls  overlooks  a  winding  in  the  River 
of  For getf Illness.  He  found  it  a  good  Bridge  for 
his  purpose.  What  he  heard  there  shall  be  told  in 
due  course. 


225 


PART  THREE 

The  Legend  of  Margaret  Wolfstone 


* 


CHAPTER  ONE 

Miss  Wolfstone  Becomes  Clairvoyant 

MISS  MARGARET  WOLFSTONE,  of  Gir- 
ton  College,  ex-nurse  of  the  Red  Cross  and 
now  headmistress  of  the  Smokeover  High  School 
for  Girls,  was  notable  among  women  for  a  fine  pres- 
ence and  for  a  winsome  and  beautiful  articulation  of 
the  mother  tongue.  Her  manner  was  vigorous,  but 
under  restraint  j  her  address  buoyant  and  charming  j 
her  laughter  musical,  timely,  and  not  infrequent. 
She  looked  you  straight  in  the  eyes  and  grasped  you 
firmly  by  the  hand.  If  you  tried  to  draw  her  por- 
trait from  memory  you  would  get  into  difficulties 
and  end  by  falling  into  a  passion  with  yourself.  Now 
you  would  draw  her  features  too  masculine  in  their 
strength,  now  too  womanly  in  their  tenderness.  You 
would  probably  begin  by  making  her  the  handsome 
but  rather  domineering  matron  of  a  hospital,  which 
you  would  instantly  rub  out.  At  the  next  attempt 
she  would  emerge  as  a  Raphael  Madonna,  which 
clearly  wouldn't  doj  but  you  would  only  make  mat- 
ters worse  by  putting  in  Mona  Lisa's  smile.  Then 
you  would  begin  again:  you  would  sit  down,  change 
your  pencils  and  think  j  and,  sure  you  had  her  this 
time,  would  produce  an  excellent  study  of  Lady  Mac- 
beth. Worse  then  ever!  And  now  for  a  last  effort: 
you  will  abandon  yourself  to  "inspiration,"  and  let 

229 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

your  pencil  draw  what  it  will.  It  draws  Lady 
Hamilton  as  a  laughing  Msenad.  Then  you  give  it 
up.    A  most  elusive  woman! 

Why  Miss  Wolfstone  had  remained  unmarried 
was  a  problem  to  be  thought  on,  for  a  woman  more 
fitted  to  be  the  mother  of  the  Gracchi  would  be  hard 
to  find.  Yet  the  reasons  were  simple:  first,  that 
fathers  for  the  Gracchi  are  none  too  plentiful  j 
second,  that  Miss  Wolfstone  was  hard  to  please } 
third,  that  she  was  devoted  to  her  profession  as  a 
teacher.  Most  assuredly  opportunities  were  not  lack- 
ing. Had  an  instrument  been  constructed  for  record- 
ing emotional  disturbances  among  Miss  Wolfstone^s 
male  friends,  the  needle  would  often  have  trembled, 
and  sometimes  with  violence.  It  trembled  every 
month  when  the  Council  of  the  Girls'  High  School 
interviewed  their  headmistress:  it  trembled  at  the 
meetings  of  the  Society  for  Ethical  Culture,  es- 
pecially when  Miss  Wolfstone  was  smoking  ciga- 
rettes. There  was  a  credible  report  that  she  had  re- 
ceived eight  offers  of  marriage  when  acting  as  a 
nurse  J  and  even  now  there  was  a  gallant  officer  with 
one  arm  who  had  more  business  in  Smokeover  than 
his  War  Office  duties  could  account  for.  She  liked 
him  all  the  better  for  having  only  one  arm,  and  told 
him  soj  but  she  was  sorry  he  had  so  few  ideas. 

Miss  Wolfstone  was  a  most  accomplished  and 
original  teacher  of  the  young  j  her  school  was  filled 
to  overflowing.  The  girls  loved  her,  and  it  was  a 
common  saying  among  them  that  "you  could  not 
tell  her  a  liej  no,  not  if  you  tried  ever  soP  She  had 
developed  a  method  of  dramatizing  the  teacher's 
work  and  was  training  her  assistants  in  the  use  of 

230 


MISS  WOLFSTONE  CLAIRVOYANT 

it.  When  a  problem  had  to  be  solved,  even  in 
geometry  or  in  grammar,  she  would  represent  the 
elements  of  it  as  actors  in  a  drama,  set  them  in  move- 
ment one  against  another,  sketch  a  situation  and  bring 
on  a  crisis.  Experts  in  education  would  come  down 
to  Smokeover  to  study  her  work. 

She  would  carry  the  same  gift,  sometimes  with 
disconcerting  effect,  into  the  discussions  of  the  Ethi- 
cal Society.  She  would  remind  the  disputants  that 
in  every  case  of  "doing  good"  there  are  two  wills  to 
be  considered:  the  will  of  the  person  who  "does" 
the  good,  and  the  will  of  the  person  to  whom  the 
good  is  "done."  Then  she  would  construct  a  dia- 
logue between  the  two  sides  and  end  up  by  telling 
the  angry  philosophers  that  the  whole  was  a  mario- 
nette show,  of  which  they  themselves  had  been 
secretly  pulling  the  strings.  Had  this  been  done 
by  anybody  else  it  would  have  been  resented  j  but 
the  grace  and  good  humour,  not  to  say  the  good 
looks,  of  Miss  Wolfstone  carried  it  off.  Though  for- 
midable she  was  not  aggressive. 

And  that  was  not  the  end  of  her  dramatizings. 
Every  Christmas  the  girls  of  the  High  School  acted 
a  play  written  by  the  headmistress.  A  public  hall 
was  engaged  for  the  performance  5  all  of  Smokeover 
that  possessed  evening  dress  turned  out  to  see  it; 
and  once  a  dramatic  critic  came  down  from  London. 
He  reminded  his  readers  next  morning  that  no 
woman  had  ever  been  a  great  dramatist,  but  ad- 
mitted that  Miss  Wolfstone  unquestionably  had 
"talent." 

The  girls  at  the  High  School  always  knew  when 
Miss  Wolfstone's  play  was  in  preparation.     They 

231 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

knew  it  by  the  peals  of  laughter  that  would  sud- 
denly break  out  towards  midnight  from  Miss  Wolf- 
stone's  little  study  on  the  second  floor.  When  Miss 
Wolf:tone  was  in  the  schoolroom  she  often  laughed 
under  due  restraint  j  but  when  she  was  writing  her 
plays,  and  alone  in  her  study,  she  sometimes  let 
herself  go — a  point  to  be  considered  by  those  philos- 
ophers who  teach  that  solitude  and  laughter  are 
incompatible.  Not  that  her  emotions  in  the  study 
were  all  of  comic  origin.  There  were  others 3  but 
these  were  inaudible. 

One  dismal  afternoon  in  winter,  at  the  very  hour 
when  Mr.  Hooker  was  discoursing  to  the  doctor  on 
the  Unreal  End  of  things.  Miss  Wolfstone  was 
standing  at  the  window  of  her  study  looking  out  into 
the  great  playground  that  lay  beneath.  Had  the  day 
been  fine  she  would  have  been  playing  hockey  with 
the  senior  girls.  But  the  weather  was  vile,  and 
Smokeover  had  put  on  its  filthiest  attire.  So,  play- 
ground games  being  out  of  the  question,  she  sent 
the  girls  to  the  gymnasium  and  resolved  to  profit 
by  a  quiet  hour  to  finish  the  scene  in  her  play  at 
which  she  had  been  working  last  night. 

^  Before  her  was  the  playground,  the  surface  dimly 
visible  through  the  mist  as  a  pool  of  water,  and 
beyond  that  the  gloom  of  the  great  city,  the  sound 
of  its  traffic  now  sunk  to  a  growl.  Standing  at  the 
window,  her  mind's  eye  pictured  the  scene  beyond: 
the  cold  and  foggy  streets,  the  dirty  pavements,  the 
thoroughfares  sweating  black  mud,  the  macintoshes 
and  the  umbrellas,  the  crowded  and  mephitic  trams, 
the  condensed  moisture  running  down  their  windows 

232 


MISS  WOLFSTONE  CLAIRVOYANT 

in  streams.  She  thought  of  the  great  chimneys  and 
of  their  smoke  pouring  downwards  under  pressure 
of  the  drizzle,  and  of  how  the  air  outside  would  be 
full  of  smuts.  From  this  her  mind  passed  to  the 
enormous  wealth  which  had  been  rolling  into  the 
city  during  the  last  years.  A  moment  later  she  was 
thinking  of  Mr.  Hooker  and  of  his  perplexities  and 
of  his  recent  escape  from  a  violent  death. 

Then  she  turned  to  her  table  and  took  up  a  card 
that  was  lying  there.  It  announced  a  lecture  by  a  cele- 
brated Pessimist  for  five  o'clock  that  day,  under  the 
auspices  of  the  Society  for  Ethical  Culture.  The 
subject  was  "The  Putrefaction  of  Modern  Art — illus- 
trated by  lantern-slides  of  the  tombstones  in  the 
Smokeover  Cemetery."  Miss  Wolfstone  laughed. 
So  Modern  Art  was  not  only  defunct  but  putrefying. 
What  next?  At  the  same  time  she  felt  sorry  for 
those  who  had  to  bury  their  dead  in  the  Smokeover 
Cemetery  on  a  day  like  this. 

The  Smokeover  Cemetery!  The  words  seemed 
to  grip  her  consciousness  with  a  sudden  mastery; 
thought  came  after,  pointing  a  finger;  and  her  im- 
agination, always  quick  to  follow  when  thought  was 
pointing  the  way,  was  instantly  at  work,  flitting  hither 
and  thither  over  the  melancholy  scene.  She  saw  the 
hideous  tombstones,  massed  together  in  every  com- 
bination of  ugliness;  she  watched  the  funeral  pro- 
cessions passing  through  the  iron  gates  and  winding 
their  way  to  the  open  graves;  she  was  inside  the 
mortuary  chapel  listening  to  the  dreadful  service 
of  the  Church  of  England  and  to  the  sobs  of  the 
women  in  black.  With  great  rapidity  the  facts  be- 
came concrete  and  alive;  then,  suddenly,  they  seemed 

233 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

to  focus  themselves  into  a  vision,  which  rose  before 
her  perfect  in  detail,  as  a  thing  witnessed  by  the 
bodily  eye — no  uncommon  experience  of  Miss  Woif- 
stone  when  her  dramatic  self  was  awake.  For  a  few 
moments  the  vision  lingered,  its  outlines  unblurred 
by  any  doubts  of  its  reality  j  then  vanished  as  sud- 
denly as  it  had  come. 

A  thing  to  be  made  a  note  of!  In  an  instant  her 
memorandum  book  was  out,  and  these  lines  were 
jotted  down: 

"Funeral  in  Smokeover  Cemetery — man  burying 
his  wife  —  dark  afternoon  in  midwinter  —  fog, 
drizzle,  cold — surrounding  tombstones  described — 
piled  earth  by  graveside  (blue  clay.?  bones  and  bits 
of  old  coffin  furniture  sticking  out.? ) — cemetery  chap- 
lain— Church  of  England  service — "pains  of  eternal 
death" — undertaker's  men  slip  in  wet  clay  and  drop 
coffin  on  chaplain's  foot — chaplain  swears — conver- 
sation of  mourners  before  and  after — and  of  under- 
takers' men  in  public-house." 

Miss  Wolfstone,  holding  the  book  before  her  and 
with  her  pen  in  her  mouth,  looked  at  what  she  had 
written.  "I  wonder,"  she  reflected,  "if  any  manager 
would  put  that  on  the  stage,  or  the  public  stand  it. 
Might,  if  it  were  part  of  a  bigger  thing.  The  Pessi- 
mist would  probably  cite  it  as  an  instance  of  putre- 
faction in  Modern  Art — 'debased  realism'  and  all 
the  rest.  After  all,  the  Gravedigger  Scene  in  Hamlet 
is  pretty  strong  meat.  Archaic,  of  course.  But  it 
wasn't  archaic  when  Shakespeare  wrote  it." 

However,  she  would  hear  that  lecture  about  the 
tombstones  at  five  o'clock  j  it  was  sure  to  have  points. 
She  knew  the  Pessimist  and  admired  him — "a  sharp 

234 


MISS  WOLFSTONE  CLAIRVOYANT 

threshing  instrument  with  teeth."  But  now  to  the 
Christmas  Play. 

It  had  for  title  "Who  is  my  Neighbour?"  and 
was  to  be  described  as  "an  old  Morality  Play  in  a 
new  dress,"  The  plot  turned  on  the  adventures  of 
Three  Wise  Men  who  embark  on  a  systematic  ex- 
ploration of  the  world  for  the  purpose  of  discover- 
ing who  their  "neighbour"  really  is.  As  they  jour- 
ney from  place  to  place  they  pass  the  time  on  the 
road  in  constructing  elaborate  programmes  of  the 
"good"  they  will  do  to  their  "neighbour"  when  they 
find  him.  At  each  halting  place  they  meet  some 
fellow  traveller  whom  one  of  the  Three  declares  to 
be  the  "neighbour"  they  are  looking  for.  But  the 
others  not  agreeing,  they  fall  into  an  argument, 
which  develops  into  a  quarrel  and  an  interchange  of 
blows,  the  relationship  of  the  Three  growing  more 
and  more  acrimonious  the  further  the  search  is  pro- 
longed. At  length,  after  endless  quarrels  and  un- 
neighbourly treatment  of  one  another,  the  Three 
Wise  Men  discover  to  their  immense  surprise  that 
each  has  been  "neighbour"  to  the  other  two  all  the 
time,  and  that  they  would  have  done  far  better  to 
stay  at  home  and  respect  each  other's  landmarks. 

The  scene  on  which  Miss  Wolfstone  was  now 
working  was  that  in  which  the  Three  Wise  Men 
come  to  blows  for  the  last  time  over  the  question 
"Who  is  my  neighbour?"  The  idea  to  be  developed 
was  that  the  quarrels  between  them  had  to  reach  the 
extreme  limit  of  bitterness  before  the  discovery  could 
be  made  that  each  was  neighbour  to  the  others  j  this 
was  now  to  emerge  like  a  flame  of  spontaneous  com- 
bustion as  they  knocked  their  heads  together  in  a  last 

235 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

and  desperate  scrimmage.  In  all  this  she  had  her 
eye  on  something  in  the  Hegelian  philosophy,  with 
which  she  was  not  unacquainted  j  she  was  also  think- 
ing of  the  war  and  its  lessons;  but  her  main  problem 
at  the  moment  was  to  contrive  the  scene  in  a  form 
which  could  be  acted  by  the  three  graceful  girls, 
who  played  the  Wise  Men,  without  undue  violence 
on  the  one  hand  and  without  sacrifice  of  essential 
humour  on  the  other. 

To  this,  then,  she  addressed  herself,  concentrat- 
ing her  mind  on  the  problem  before  her  and  making 
a  great  effort  to  pick  up  the  thread  and  recapture  the 
spirit  in  which  she  had  left  off  last  night.  But  soon 
she  found,  to  her  great  annoyance,  that  the  vein 
was  completely  dried  up.  Her  brain  seemed 
paralyzed  at  the  point  where  the  spirit  needed  its 
assistance  for  invention,  creation,  expression;  par- 
alyzed at  that  point,  but  intensely  active  at  others. 
Nothing  to  the  purpose  would  come.  Every  ex- 
pression she  jotted  down  was  unnatural;  every  line 
had  to  be  blotted  out,  and  the  next  attempt  would 
only  yield  something  worse.  A  stagnant  and  melan- 
choly atmosphere,  in  which  creation  was  impossible, 
seemed  to  surround  her;  and  the  springs  of  laughter, 
essential  for  the  vitalizing  of  the  scene,  refused  to 
flow. 

The  truth  was  that  she  could  not  wrench  her  mind 
away  from  the  dark  track  into  which  it  had  been 
forced  by  her  recent  graveyard  meditations.  These 
acted  as  an  inhibition.  Do  what  she  would,  the  miser- 
able scenes  her  imagination  had  conjured  up,  hover- 
ing in  the  background  of  the  mind,  gave  their  tone 
to  all  the  rest  and  kept  her  thoughts  on  the  level  of 

236 


MISS  WOLFSTONE  CLAIRVOYANT 

unhappy  things  j  where,  by  a  subtle  association,  they 
passed  rapidly  from  one  calamity  to  another,  but 
always  alighting  at  last,  for  some  reason  she  could 
not  explain,  on  the  image  of  Mr.  Hooker  and  his 
troubles.  She  thought  of  his  gloomy  home;  of  his 
bereavements  J  of  his  loneliness;  of  the  skeleton  in 
his  cupboard;  of  his  racked  and  agitated  conscience; 
of  the  insoluble  problem  he  was  battling  with ;  of  the 
shock  and  the  horror  of  the  accident  on  the  line. 
Then  she  remembered  his  piteous  consent  to  receive 
the  advice  of  the  Ethical  Society  and  the  despera- 
tion such  an  act  implied,  and  the  cold  comfort  he 
would  get  from  the  advice.  She  had  written  to  him 
herself.  What  good  had  she  done?  She  wondered. 
Perhaps  it  was  a  foolish  act. 

There  was  something  in  common  between  Miss 
Wolfstone  and  the  millionaire.  Like  him  she  came 
of  a  Puritan  ancestry,  and  was  aware  that,  in  spite 
of  all  the  changes  her  mind  had  undergone,  the  old 
habit  of  looking  for  a  "lead"  and  trusting  to  fugitive 
intuitions  was  still  strong  within  her.  She  had  often 
observed  the  same  thing  in  him.  When,  for  example, 
he  had  startled  the  Society  by  his  grotesque  proposal 
about  Rumbelow,  she  divined  at  once  how  the  idea 
had  originated.  It  had  burst  upon  him  in  the  night 
watches,  and,  suddenly  reverting  to  type,  he  had 
accepted  it  with  the  uncritical  obstinacy  of  a  mystic. 
She  had  done  the  same  thing  herself  a  thousand 
times,  sometimes  with  unfortunate  results,  but  not 
always — no,  not  always  by  any  means! 

And  there  was  another  link,  perhaps  deeper.  Mr. 
Hooker's  moral  philosophy,  as  another  Voice  has 
told,  had  for  its  bedrock  a  certain  maxim  or  Great 

237 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

Principle — "So  live  that  by  affirming  your  own  per- 
sonality you  may  help  others  to  affirm  theirs."  This 
maxim,  reiterated  by  Mr.  Hooker  a  thousand  times, 
was  the  lode  star  of  his  conduct  and  the  theme  on 
which  his  ethical  propaganda,  his  lectures  and 
speeches  were  variations.  To  the  members  of  the 
Society  it  formed  the  centre  of  an  endless  and  in- 
conclusive argument,  and  when  Professors  came  down 
from  Oxford  with  the  latest  pronouncement  of 
philosophical  culture,  they  seldom  failed  to  point 
out  that  the  Great  Principle  was  nothing  new,  a 
mere  restatement  of  an  old  formula  of  Kant,  and 
open  to  grave  objection  on  logical  grounds.  It  was 
noted,  however,  that  Miss  Wolfstone  made  no  con- 
tribution to  these  exercises,  but  remained  consistently 
silent  whenever  the  Great  Principle  was  in  question. 
She  was  meditating  on  its  dramatic  possibilities. 

One  night,  walking  home  with  Mr.  Hooker  after 
a  meeting,  as  she  often  did,  she  said  to  him,  "Mr. 
Hooker,  I  believe  in  your  Principle.  That  is,  I  be- 
lieve in  it  not  as  a  thing  to  be  argued  about,  but  as 
a  thing  to  be  tried.  It's  the  best  working  philosophy 
I  know  of,  provided  always  you  limit  the  field  of 
its  application  to  a  scope  you  can  manage.  I  have 
tried  it  myself  within  limits,  and  I  want  to  tell  you 
that  it  works  admirably — yes,  delightfully.  Before 
I  have  done  I  mean  to  make  it  the  driving  power  in 
the  life  of  my  school.  I  do  it  all  by  indirection, 
chiefly  by  means  of  the  plays  I  write  for  the  girls 
and  make  them  act.  I  never  mention  the  Principle 
itself,  though  I  shall  when  I  have  got  it  fully  at 
work.  The  girls  fall  into  it  unconsciously;  so  do 
the  teachers.     In  the  course  of  time  it  will  become 

238 


MISS  WOLFSTONE  CLAIRVOYANT 

the  basis  of  education  everywhere,  the  source  of  a 
spiritual  revival,  beginning  in  the  schools.  Dear 
Mr.  Hooker" — she  often  addressed  him  thus — "I 
can't  measure  what  I  owe  you  for  fixing  that  idea 
in  my  mind.  It  is  such  a  sound  thing j  so  different 
from  all  the  rotten  contentiousness  of  our  Society! 
It  was  the  first  clear  point  of  departure,  the  first 
authentic  finger-post,  that  I  found  at  a  time  when  I 
was  completely  lost  in  life.  I  owe  it  to  you.  Thank 
you  a  thousand  times.    Good-night." 

Thinking  of  these  things  and  weighed  down  by  a 
sense  of  failure.  Miss  Wolfstone  laid  her  manu- 
script aside,  realizing  that  by  no  effort  could  she 
produce  another  line  that  day.  Very  slowly  she 
opened  a  drawer,  placed  the  manuscript  inside,  and, 
with  the  same  slow  movement,  closed  the  drawer, 
musing  deeply  all  the  time. 

She  looked  at  her  watch;  it  was  half-past  four. 
Should  she  go  to  the  Pessimist's  lecture — or  join  the 
girls  in  the  gymnasium?  True,  she  had  had  enough 
of  Smokeover  Cemetery  for  that  afternoon.  Still, 
the  Pessimist  was  always  worth  hearing;  and  then 
the  speeches  afterwards — they  would  certainly  be 
amusing! 

A  few  minutes  later  Miss  Wolfstone  found  her- 
self in  one  of  the  crowded  trams.  Among  the  pas- 
sengers she  noticed  several  members  of  the  Ethical 
Society — the  Champion  of  the  Simple  Life,  the  de- 
signer of  women's  frocks,  the  dentist  and  two 
spiritualists — these  last  in  close  conversation — all  on 
their  way  to  the  lecture. 

Presently  a  schoolboy  in  a  dripping  macintosh  got 
in,  and  seeing  Miss  Wolfstone  at  the  further  end 

239 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

forced  his  way  through  the  standing  passengers  until 
he  was  in  front  of  her.  It  was  Billie  Smith,  the 
would-be  pirate,  a  close  friend  of  the  headmistress. 

"Where  are  you  going,  Billie  r"  she  asked. 

"I'm  going  to  the  lecture.  Father  said  I  might. 
He  doesn't  believe  in  cemeteries.  He  and  Mother 
are  going  to  be  cremated.  It's  better  fun  than  being 
buried—don't  you  think  so.  Miss  Wolf  stone? 
Father's  always  talking  about  cemeteries,  and  he 
wants  Ted  and  me  to  grow  up  to  hate  them.  I  heard 
him  tell  Mother  so.  But  we  haven't  quite  made  up 
our  minds.  Ted  can't  come  to  the  lecture — he's  got 
a  sore  throat.  I  want  to  see  the  pictures.  They're 
sure  to  be  ripping." 

"I  hate  cemeteries  as  much  as  your  father  does," 
said  Miss  Wolfstone.  "I've  seen  one  this  afternoon, 
and  it  was  a  very  nasty  place. 

"Then  I  think  /  shall  hate  them,  too,"  said  Billie. 
"You  know,  I  mean  tOy  Miss  Wolfstone.  But,  oh, 
I  say,  there's  something  to  tell  you!  Father  says 
Mr.  Hooker  doesn't  know  what  to  do  with  all  his 
money.     Ted  and  I  have  got  a  plan!" 

And  without  a  pause  he  reeled  off  the  great 
scheme  of  buried  treasure. 

"It's  a  bully  plan,  Billie,"  said  Miss  Wolfstone. 
"You'll  take  me  with  you  on  the  pirate  ship,  won't 
you  ? " 

"Rather!"  cried  Billie.  "You  shall  be  head 
stewardess. — No,  you  shall  be  nurse  to  the  wounded. 
We're  sure  to  have  lots  of  wounded.  Miss  Wolf- 
stone. And — oh,  I  say — if  we  get  wrecked,  you 
shall  save  my  life — no,  Ted's  life — same  as  you 
saved  Mr.  Rumbelow's  when  you  were  torpedoed." 

240 


MISS  WOLFSTONE  CLAIRVOYANT 

"I'd  rather  be  nurse,  if  you  don't  mind,  Billie. 
And  I  suppose  you'll  give  me  a  share  o£  the  treasure." 

"Rather!     How  much  would  you  like?" 

"I  shall  want  a  million  at  least." 

"Oh,  I  say,  that's  a  lot!  It  won't  leave  much  for 
the  others." 

"I  won't  go  for  less,  Billie,  especially  if  I  have  to 
save  Ted's  life.  But  are  you  two  going  to  be  pirates 
always  ?^^ 

"Oh,  no,  only  for  a  bit.  When  we've  finished 
being  pirates  we  are  going  to  be  doctors. — Oh,  I  say, 
do  you  know  what  a  boy  said  in  form  this  morn- 
ing? Old  Baines  asked  him  for  an  example  of  the 
Ablative  Absolute — not  in  Latin,  in  English — and 
what  do  you  think  he  said?  *C^sar,  having 
finished  being  sick,  pursued  the  Gauls.'  Wasn't  it 
fun?" 

"And  it  was  a  wrong  example  too,  Billie.  So 
when  you  and  Ted  have  finished  being  pirates  you 
are  going  to  pursue  your  patients.    Is  that  it?" 

"We're  going  to  make  them  better,"  said  Billie., 

"How  are  you  going  to  do  it?" 

"Promise  you  won't  tell  anybody!" 

"Yes." 

"Well,  we  are  going  to  invent  a  medicme  that  will 
put  all  the  bad  people  to  sleep  for  the  rest  of  their 
lives — so  that  they  can't  do  any  more  harm  and — 
you  know — so  that  they  can't  have  any  children." 

Billie  said  all  this  in  a  whisper  and  hesitated  a 
little  over  the  last  sentence,  as  though  he  were  dimly 
conscious  that  the  topic  was  rather  an  indelicate  one 
to  broach  to  a  lady. 

"So  you  are  a  Eugenist,  Billie?" 

241 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

'^Father's  one.  He's  always  talking  about  that — 
when  he  isn't  talking  about  cemeteries." 

"Does  he  talk  to  Ted  and  you  about  it?" 

"No,  not  exactly.  But,  you  know,  we  listen  some- 
times."   And  Billie  blushed  to  the  roots  of  his  hair. 

"But  when  you  have  invented  your  medicine, 
how  are  you  going  to  find  out  who  the  bad  people 
are?" 

"Oh,  the  policeman  will  do  that!  Every  police- 
man is  to  have  a  bottle  of  our  medicine  in  his  pocket, 
and  when  he  catches  a  bad  person  he'll  give  him  a 
dose.  We'll  give  one  to  Mr.  Rumbelow.  We  heard 
Father  say  that  the  police  ought  to  give  him 
a  sleeping  draught.  That's  what  gave  us  the 
idea." 

"But  suppose  the  bad  people  get  hold  of  your 
medicine  and  give  it  to  the  good  ones?" 

"The  policeman  wouldn't  let  them,"  said  Billie. 
"The  policemen  are  all  good." 

"Ah,  but  you  know,  Billie,  the  bad  people  would 
hire  bad  policemen — new  ones." 

"The  beasts!"  said  Billie.  "We  didn't  think  of 
that.  But  I  know!  We  shall  have  to  keep  the  medi- 
cine locked  up!" 

"I  think  you  will,"  said  Miss  Wolfstone.  "And 
mind  you  get  a  good  lock,  and  a  good  policeman  to 
stand  guard  over  it." 

Hereupon  the  designer  of  women's  frocks  burst 
into  loud  laughter.  Billie,  who  had  incautiously 
raised  his  voice  at  the  last  sentences,  gave  the  listener 
a  glance  of  wrath  and  mentally  put  him  down  as 
one  of  the  first  to  whom  the  lethal  draught  should 
be  administered.     Then,  resuming  his  whisper,  he 

242 


MISS  WOLFSTONE  CLAIRVOYANT 

turned  to  Miss  Wolfstone  and  went  off  on  another 
tack. 

"Oh,  Miss  Wolfstone,"  he  said,  "do  you  know 
what  happened  this  afternoon?  I  was  just  going 
to  tell  you  when  you  began  about  the  pirates.  Father 
heard  it  from  a  man  who  was  there,  and  said  to 
Mother  if  that  didn't  prove  cremation  what  did?  It 
happened  at  Mrs.  Hooker's  funeral.  The  clergy- 
man was  quite  tipsy,  and  swore  like  anything,  and 
some  of  the  men  barged  into  him  with  the  coffin, 
and  there  was  a  regular  fight.     Wasn't  it  awful?" 

At  that  moment  the  car  stopped  in  front  of  the 
Hall  where  the  Pessimist  was  to  lecture,  and  the 
passengers  began  to  alight.  Miss  Wolfstone,  who 
was  very  pale,  kept  her  seat. 

"You're  coming  too,"  said  Billie,  as  he  prepared 
to  follow  the  others. 

"No,  not  to-night,  Billie." 

Billie's  countenance  fell. 

"Oh,  do!"  he  cried.  "If  you  don't  come  I  shan't 
enjoy  the  lecture  one  bit.  And  then  we  can  go  home 
together  and  talk  about  the  policeman.  And  see," 
he  added,  pulling  something  out  of  his  pocket,  "I've 
got  a  box  of  chocolates.    Ripping  ones! " 

"No,  I'm  too  tired.  Besides,  I've  been  in  Smoke- 
over  Cemetery  once  already  to-day,  and  between 
you  and  me,  Billie,  I  can't  stand  any  more.  Good- 
night, dear!" 

On  returning  to  the  High  School,  Miss  Wolfstone 
went  straight  to  her  study,  took  out  her  memorandum 
book,  copied  what  she  had  written  in  the  afternoon, 
and  in  a  parallel  column  wrote  down  word  for  word 
the  story  she  had  heard  from  Billie. 

243 


CHAPTER  TWO 

Miss  Wolfstone   Proves  Herself   an   Adventuress 

T^  HILE  Miss  Wolfstone  and  Billie  Smith  were 
"  ^  discoursing  in  the  manner  aforesaid  of  buried 
treasure,  eugenics,  the  disposal  of  the  dead  and  the 
suppression  of  the  wicked,  Mr.  Hooker,  as  the 
Legend  has  told,  was  being  confirmed,  by  a  strange 
series  of  events,  in  a  certain  irrevocable  determina- 
tion. In  consequence  of  which  a  tall  gentleman  with 
a  keen  face  and  masterful  hands,  a  black  bag  open 
at  his  side,  might  have  been  seen  next  day  in  a  first- 
class  carriage  on  the  line  to  Smokeover.  This  was 
Mr.  Polycarp,  the  lawyer,  summoned  by  the  million- 
aire to  receive  instructions  in  respect  of  his  new 
Will. 

Mr.  Polycarp  was  far  from  being  enchanted  with 
the  prospect  before  him.  For  some  time  past 
evidence  had  been  accumulating  which,  in  Mr.  Poly- 
carp's  judgment,  confirmed  the  embarrassing  con- 
clusion that  his  client's  mind  was  becoming  unhinged. 
For  example,  among  the  documents  in  the  black 
bag  was  the  letter,  written  by  Hooker  many  weeks 
before,  which  had  first  aroused  the  lawyer's  sus- 
picions. Mr.  Polycarp  took  it  out  and  read  it  over 
again.  "My  dear  Polycarp,"  it  ran,  "I  have  been 
trying  to  think  out  the  matter  of  making  my  Will  in 
philosophical  terms.    The  difficulties  it  presents  may 

244 


MISS  WOLFSTONE  AN  ADVENTURESS 

recall  to  you  the  discussions  we  had  in  the  old  days 
when  we  studied  Moral  Science  together  at  Trinity. 
What  precisely  is  the  philosophical  significance  o£ 
making  one^s  Will  ?  I  take  it  that  a  man's  Will 
should  be  the  affirmation  of  his  personality  after  he 
is  dead.  But  how  can  a  man  continue  to  affirm  his 
personality  when  he  is  not  there  to  conduct  the 
operation,  and  when  he  is  no  longer  conscious  of  what 
he  is  doing?  Unfortunately  the  philosophers  give  us 
no  helpj  what  they  have  to  say  refers  to  the  wills 
of  living  men  J  not  a  word  about  the  wills  of  dead 
ones.  One  may  read  all  that  has  been  written  on 
the  Will  by  the  greatest  thinkers  of  ancient  and 
modern  times  without  receiving  one  hint  or  plain 
word  of  direction  as  to  how  a  Will  should  be  made. 
Most  of  these  thinkers  appear  to  have  been  poor,  or 
relatively  so.  Had  they  been  millionaires,  I  venture 
to  think  that  their  views  would  have  been  different  j 
at  least  they  would  not  have  overlooked  the  problem 
I  have  now  to  solve.  Nevertheless,  my  principles 
require  me  to  make  a  Good  Will,  in  the  sense  in 
which  Kant  uses  the  term.  You  will  understand 
the  governing  idea  on  which  I  desire  you  to  act,  when 
I  say  that  my  intention  is  to  devote  the  whole  of  my 
disposable  property  to  financing  the  Moral  Ideal." 

"How  the  devil  that  is  to  be  done  God  only 
knows,"  said  Polycarp,  as  he  replaced  the  letter  in 
the  bag. 

But  the  letter  was  now  ancient  history,  and  worse 
had  happened  since.  There  was  the  endowment  of 
the  nurse,  an  act  out  of  all  proportion}  and,  if  rumour 
spoke  true,  there  was  another  woman  hovering  on 
the  horizon.     Would  it  not  be  better,  Mr.  Poly- 

245 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

carp  asked  himself,  to  wash  his  hands  of  the  whole 
business?  Perhaps j  but  millionaire  clients  were  not 
to  be  picked  up  every  day,  and  old  friendship 
counted  for  something.  At  least  he  might  protect 
Hooker  from  the  wolves  and  the  sharks,  of  whom 
many  were  sure  to  be  on  the  prowl. 

A  few  hours  later  the  lawyer  and  the  doctor  who 
had  accompanied  Mr.  Hooker  to  the  cemetery  were 
dining  together  in  the  room  where  the  latter  had 
eaten  his  melancholy  breakfast,  Mr.  Hooker  having 
submitted  to  the  order  that  he  was  to  see  no  one  else 
that  day.  When  the  cloth  was  removed  Polycarp 
said: 

"You  probably  know  what  has  brought  me  here, 
doctor.  It's  a  most  difficult  and  perplexing  proposi- 
tion. To  begin  with,  I  doubt  if  Mr.  Hooker  is 
mentally  in  a  fit  condition  to  make  his  Will." 

"To  be  candid,"  said  the  doctor,  "the  case  is  be- 
yond the  reach  of  my  practice." 

"Same  here!"  said  the  lawyer,  remembering  the 
letter  he  had  read  in  the  train. 

"On  general  grounds,"  the  doctor  continued,  "I 
should  say  without  hesitation  that  Hooker  is  the 
victim  of  delusions.  At  the  same  time  there  is 
reason  to  think  that  the  delusions  saved  his  life.  It 
was  touch-and-go  for  a  long  time  until  something 
happened,  the  nature  of  which  I  have  not  been  able 
to  find  out.  The  nurse  lied  about  it.  But  various 
indications  have  led  me  to  think  that  a  sudden  change 
occurred  in  his  brain." 

"Pathological?" 

"Only  a  specialist  could  tell  you  that.    Speaking  at 

246 


MISS  WOLFSTONE  AN  ADVENTURESS 

a  venture  I  should  say  yes.  His  manner  and  con- 
versation at  the  funeral  were  most  extraordinary. 
He  seemed  utterly  oblivious  of  what  was  going  on, 
which  was  fortunate  in  the  circumstances,  and  poured 
out  a  lot  of  incomprehensible  stuff  about  the  un- 
reality of  it  all." 

And  the  doctor  repeated  what  he  could  remember, 
which  was  not  very  much,  of  Hooker's  metaphysical 
remarks  in  the  cemetery. 

"Highly  significant,"  said  Polycarp.  "But  it's  a 
pity  you  cannot  speak  more  definitely.  A  distinct 
medical  opinion  one  way  or  the  other  would  be  of 
the  greatest  value  to  me  at  the  present  moment." 

Here  the  doctor  meditated  for  a  few  moments. 
Finally  he  decided  to  say  nothing  about  the  snubbing 
he  had  received  from  the  millionaire. 

"You  should  call  in  a  specialist,"  he  said. 

"That  is  precisely  what  I  wish  to  do.  The  diffi- 
culty is  to  manage  Hooker.  A  suggestion  from  us 
that  his  mind  is  unhinged  might  unhinge  it  still 
further." 

"I  doubt  it,"  said  the  doctor.  "He  knows  what 
we  think.  In  fact,  he  said  as  much  this  morning.  I 
believe  he  would  assent  at  once  to  the  specialist." 

"Whom  do  you  recommend?" 

"Timbertree,  unquestionably." 

"I  know  him,"  said  the  lawyer. 

'^Do  you?"  said  the  doctor,  pouring  out  his  fourth 
glass  of  port.  "Then  you  know  the  biggest  black- 
guard and  the  biggest  genius  in  the  medical  pro- 
fession." 

The  conversation  now  branched  off  to  the  merits 
and  demerits  of  Sir  William  Timbertree,  Baronet. 

247 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

It  was  garnished  with  lurid  and  amazing  stories,  and 
was  going  from  bad  to  worse  when  a  servant  entered 
the  room. 

"Mr.  Hooker  wishes  to  see  the  doctor,"  he  said. 

The  doctor  left  the  room.  Returning  after  ten 
minutes  he  resumed  his  seat  at  the  table,  drank  an- 
other glass  of  port  and  said: 

"That's  all  right.  There's  telepathy  in  this  house, 
Mr.  Polycarpj  the  old  boy  has  anticipated  us.  In- 
sists on  being  certified  by  a  specialist  before  he  makes 
his  Will.  Timbertree  is  to  be  summoned  to-morrow 
morning.     What  do  you  make  of  that?" 

"Bad  sign.  Shows  that  he's  doubtful  about  him- 
self. When  a  man  doesn't  know  whether  he's  drunk 
or  sober,  he's  always  drunk." 

"Then  pass  the  decanter.  Thanks.  But  I  say, 
Mr.  Polycarp,  what  are  your  ideas  on  telepathy?" 

"None  at  all.  I  leave  it  to  the  fools  and  to  the 
women." 

"You  shouldn't.  You  lawyers  ought  to  cross- 
examine  it.  I'm  not  a  psychic  myself — not  a  bit 
of  it.  But  I'll  tell  you  a  curious  thing.  Of  course 
my  practice  takes  me  into  a  lot  of  houses.  And  I 
never  enter  a  house  without  feeling  on  the  instant 
that  it  is  either  a  bad  place  or  a  good  one.  If  it's  bad 
there's  sure  to  be  trouble.  If  it's  good  I  generally 
pull  the  patient  through." 

"Which  sort  is  the  house  we  are  in  at  the  present 
moment?" 

"Bad — damned  bad — except  for  this  port.  But 
where  do  you  imagine  Hooker  has  been  this  after- 
noon?" 

"Where?" 

248 


MISS  WOLFSTONE  AN  ADVENTURESS 

"At  Rumbelow's." 

"Phew!     That's  the  very  mischief!" 

"Didn't  I  say  this  was  a  bad  house?  Full  of 
demons,  I  can  smell  'em.  But  wait  till  you've  seen 
My  Lady.     She's  a  sorceress." 

"I  have  been  dreading  this  all  along,"  said  Poly- 
carp,  whose  potations  had  been  more  moderate  than 
those  of  his  companion.  "The  only  hope  now  is  that 
Timbertree  will  certify  him  as  insane." 

"Telepathy  again!"  cried  the  doctor.  "I  was 
thinking  the  same  thing.  I  say,  Mr.  Polycarp,  you 
ought  to  study  telepathy." 

"Change  the  subject." 

"All  right!  Buried  Treasure — let's  talk  about 
that.  I'll  tell  you  a  story.  One  day  when  Hooker 
was  ill  they  showed  me  into  the  library.  There  was 
a  heap  of  letters  on  a  table  j  I  read  'em — mean  thing, 
but  I  did  it.  They  came  from  a  crowd  of  imbeciles 
in  the  Ethical  Society  advising  Hooker  what  to  do 
with  his  money — and  there  was  one  from  a  school- 
boy. It  split  me  in  two!  He  advised  Hooker  to 
bury  his  money  on  a  desert  island  and  have  it  hunted 
for  by  pirates.     What  do  you  think  of  that?" 

"I  think,"  said  Mr.  Polycarp,  "that  Hooker  will 
probably  end  by  following  the  schoolboy's  advice. 
But  bedtime,  doctor!  We  shall  have  a  busy  day  to- 
morrow." 

"All  right  J  but  finish  the  bottle  first.  And  there 
was  another  letter  from  Miss  Wolfstone." 

"What!" 

"Miss  Wolfstone.  Able  woman.  And  a  damn 
cunning  letter.  She's  after  the  millions.  And  she's 
in  with  the  Rumbelows.     Saved  his  life  when  the 

249 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

Germans  torpedoed  'em.  The  devils!  Swims  like 
a  fish." 

"Tell  me  more  about  this  to-morrow  morning. 
Good-night." 

"Good-night,  Mr.  Polycarp.  Good-night,  sir. 
I'm  glad  you  are  going  to  sleep  in  this  house.  Bad 
place.  I'm  not  a  believer  in  ghosts,  but  I  don't 
like  'em — no,  I  don't  like  'em!  And  look  here,  Mr. 
Polycarp,  I'll  give  you  a  tip — a  damn  good  tip!  If 
you've  any  spare  cash  at  the  bank,  put  it  on  Joy 
Lady.    Hooker's  backing  her  for  twenty  thousand." 

Sir  William  Timbertree  arrived  next  day.  A 
man  not  more  than  fifty,  of  the  middle  height, 
broadly  and  coarsely  built,  except  for  his  hands,  and 
with  a  fresh  complexion  eloquent  of  Sunday  golf. 
The  son  of  a  bricklayer,  he  had  worked  his  way  to 
the  head  of  his  profession  with  the  momentum  of 
a  steam  roller,  winning  all  the  medical  and  surgical 
degrees  the  University  of  London  has  to  offer,  and 
astonishing  the  experts  with  the  ruthless  daring  of 
his  surgical  feats.  He  had  been  decorated  by  half 
the  scientific  academies  of  Europe,  and  his  consult- 
ing room  was  a  museum  of  orders  and  gold  medals, 
which  he  loved  to  display.  In  the  hall  of  his  house 
in  Harley  Street  there  hung  an  immense  portrait  of 
him  by  a  leading  painter,  in  which  he  was  represented 
as  a  jolly  demon  in  the  act  of  delivering  a  lecture, 
with  a  human  brain  on  a  table  beside  him.  His 
presence  was  compact  of  vigour,  rapidity  and  anima- 
tion; his  address  blunt,  decisive  and  overwhelm- 
ing. He  spoke  with  a  Cockney  accent,  dropped  his 
"h's,"  "and  there  were  other  traces  of  his  lowly  origin 

250 


MISS  WOLFSTONE  AN  ADVENTURESS 

which  he  was  at  no  pains  to  disguise.  Most  of  his 
adjectives  were  prefixed  by  "damned"  or,  prefer- 
ably, by  another  expletive  which  has  not  yet  found 
its  way  into  polite  literature.  People  said  that  he 
combined  the  instincts  of  a  street  Arab,  the  manners 
of  an  ostler  and  the  science  of  a  master  mind.  In 
the  medical  profession  he  was  familiarly  known  as 
"Bill." 

After  hearing  the  main  features  of  the  case  from 
the  family  doctor,  and  a  few  words  from  Polycarp 
on  the  legal  side.  Sir  William  lost  no  time  in  getting 
to  business.  For  two  hours  he  was  closeted  with  Mr. 
Hooker. 

On  returning  to  the  library,  where  the  lawyer  was 
smoking  a  cigar,  he  said: 

"YouVe  in  a  'ole,  Polycarp.    He's  super-sane." 

"Which  means,  I  suppose,  that  he's  insane"  said 
Polycarp. 

"Yes,  and  no.  Sanity's  a  mean  between  two  ex- 
tremes— idiocy  at  one  end,  genius  at  the  other.  But 
you  can't  treat  'em  by  the  same  methods.  He's  told 
me  the  whole  story.  The  queerest  old  fandingo  you 
ever  heard.  His  head's  chock  full  of  Plato  and 
Christianity." 

"I  never  heard  him  mention  either,"  said  Poly- 
carp. 

"P'raps  not  J  but  that's  the  name  of  his  disease." 

"A  religious  delusion,  then?" 

"  'Alf-and-'alf .  The  devil's  been  gettin'  at  him 
from  the  other  side." 

"What  devil?" 

"A  woman,  of  course  j  or  rather,  women.  But 
no  tomfoolery.    A  thought-out  thing.     He  believes 

251 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

that  his  money  is  safest  in  the  hands  of  a  woman, 
and  means  to  leave  it  all  to  that  play- writing  school  ^ 
mistress  in  Smokeover." 

"What  can  be  done?" 

"Nothing,  but  let  him  have  his  way.  Unless  you 
give  him  his  head  he'll  buck  you  out  of  the  saddle. 
Repression  would  be  fatal  j  he  would  be  a  raving 
lunatic  to-morrow  morning.  For  the  rest,  see  Miss 
Wolfstone  and  square  things  with  her  as  best  you 
can.     Use  your  lawyer's  wits." 

Before  Polycarp  could  interfere  Sir  William  had 
rung  the  bell,  and  the  butler  entering: 

"Send  the  car  immediately  to  fetch  Miss  Wolf- 
stone,"  he  saidj  "and  say  that  Mr.  Polycarp  and 
Sir  William  Timbertree  want  to  see  her." 

"Isn't  that  unwise?"  said  Polycarp,  when  the  man 
had  gone.     "The  servants  will  talk." 

"They're  talking  already.  I've  interviewed  most 
of  them — and  a  precious  set  of  rascals  they  are. 
Unless  you  can  'andle  Miss  Wolfstone,  you're 
done!" 

"I  wish  you  had  left  me  to  summon  Miss  Wolf- 
stone at  the  proper  time.  But  it's  too  late  now.  Are 
you  prepared  to  certify  that  Hooker  is  of  ^sound 
mind'?" 

"What  else?  Check  him,  and  you  drive  him  mad. 
I  wouldn't  do  it  for  a  million.  My  duty  is  to  the 
patient,  and  I'm  not  going  to  risk  him  to  make  busi- 
ness for  a  lot  of — lawyers.  Go  to  his  roomj  make 
his  Will  exactly  as  he  wishes;  don't  thwart  him  in 
anything.  Otherwise  you  take  the  consequences  and 
— you  won't  like  them.  Look  'ere,  Polycarp. 
'Ooker's  on  the  brink  of  an  explosion — no  kid  about 

252 


MISS  WOLFSTONE  AN  ADVENTURESS 

that!      Miss   Wolf  stone's   the   safety   valve.      You 
want  to  sit  on  it.     You'll  be  blown  up!" 

"The  worst  that  could  happen,"  said  Polycarp, 
"is  that  his  fortune  would  go  to  an  Ethical  Society — 
that  is,  assuming  he  leaves  his  old  Will  unrevoked." 

"You're  not  reckoning  with  me!"  said  Timber- 
tree.  "You  don't  seem  to  be  aware  that  I'm  master 
of  the  situation.  Make  his  Will  as  I  tell  you,  and 
I  attest  it  before  leaving  the  house.  Swerve  a  hair's- 
breadth  from  my  orders  and  I'm  a  witness  on  the 
other  side." 

"What  other  side?" 

"The  other  side  that  I  shall  make." 

"Do  you  know  Miss  Wolf  stone,  then?" 

"Bah ! "  cried  Timbertree.  "What  do  I  care  about 
Miss  Wolf  stone  or  Miss  Anybody-else?  Let  him 
leave  his  money  where  he  will.  What's  that  to  me? 
I'm  here  to  save  'Ooker — and  he's  a  great  old  boy. 
Thwart  him,  and  you  bring  on  a  crisis.  Humour 
him,  and  he'll  come  to  his  senses  in  six  months.  Then 
you  can  make  a  new  start." 

"Suppose  he  dies  in  the  meantime?" 

"Barring  accidents,  he  won't  And  what  if  he 
does?  He's  super-sane,  I  tell  you.  Knows  what  he's 
doing  better  than  the  tom-f  ools  that  make  their  wills 
in  your  office.  I  tell  you  what,  Polycarp,  the 
world's  ruled  more  than  it  knows  by  the  wills  of 
dead  men.     And  damned  bad  wills  most  of  them 


are." 


"Except  from  a  lawyer's  point  of  view,"  said 
Polycarp. 

"Of  course,"  said  Timbertree.  "But  who  knows 
better  than  you  what  tosh  it  all  is?     A  man  tryin' 

253 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

to  keep  his  hold  on  his  money  after  he's  dead!  Can't 
be  done!     Who  but  a  fool  would  think  it  could?" 

Mr.  Polycarp  smiled. 

"Of  course,"  Sir  William  continued,  "if  you  didn't 
like  'Ooker's  games  you  should  have  headed  him 
off  when  he  began.  Why  didn't  you  put  the  stopper 
on  when  he  made  his  first  Will?  What  the  hell 
can  an  Ethical  Society  do  with  two  millions — what 
but  quarrel  among  'emselves?  You  should  have 
frightened  him.  Why  didn't  you  call  me  in  then? 
In  two  minutes  I  could  have  made  him  quiet  as  a 
lamb." 

"I  doubt  if  you  could,"  said  Polycarp.  "He's  as 
obstinate  as  a  mule.  An  ordinary  Christian,  Timber- 
tree,  one  can  manage,  but  a  millionaire  with  a  con- 
science is  the  very  devil." 

"We  could  have  called  it  'religious  delusion,'  " 
said  Timbertree.  "It's  the  same  with  conscience  as 
with  everything  else.  Too  much,  and  you're  mad. 
Too  little,  and  you're  a  beast.  But  talking  of  re- 
ligious delusions  reminds  me  of  a  case  I  was  treating 
last  week.  An  able  man,  physicist  and  all  that.  Well, 
thirty  years  ago  he  said  a  prayer,  and  made  up  his 
mind  never  to  say  another.  It  all  turned  on  that. 
The  prayer  was — this  is  how  he  put  it  to  me — *0 
Lord,  I  expect  you  to  look  after  all  my  interests  for 
the  rest  of  my  life,  and  believing  that  you're  a  gentle- 
man and  that  you  won't  forget,  I'm  never  going  to 
worry  you  again.'  Well,  he  lost  his  three  sons  in 
the  war,  same  as  'Ooker,  and  went  clean  off  his 
chump.  He's  written  a  book  called  The  Great  For- 
gettery  proving  that  God  has  no  memory,  and  that 
unless  you  keep  on  reminding  Him  of  what  you 

254 


MISS  WOLFSTONE  AN  ADVENTURESS 

want  Him  to  do  for  you,  He  forgets  it  all  and  does 
nothing.  He  thinks  he  committed  a  crime  when  he 
made  up  his  mind  not  to  worry  God — sin  against 
the  Holy  Ghost  and  all  that,  and  he's  written  this 
book  to  square  himself  on  the  Judgment  Day.  Scrip- 
ture texts  by  the  bucketful!  The  first  thing  he 
said  to  me  was,  *Pray  without  ceasing — pray  with- 
out ceasingy  Sir  William.'  And  argument!.  My 
snakes,  he'd  argue  the  head  oflF  the  Lord  Chief  Jus- 
tice." 

"Do  you  never  pray  yourself?"  asked  Mr.  Poly- 
carp. 

"You  know  I  do!  Everybody  knows  I  do!  When 
Pm  going  to  perform  an  operation.  Only  then. 
Would  you  like  to  hear  how  it  started,  Polycarp? 
All  right.  Well,  my  old  mother — she  used  to  take 
in  washin' — I  tell  you  she  was  proud  of  tney  my 
boy!  Of  course  I  made  the  old  lady  comfortable 
when  the  shekels  began  to  come  in.  Bought  her  a 
nice  little  'ouse  on  Blackheath,  with  a  good  servant 
to  wait  on  her,  and  a  gramophone  to  recite  poetry  j 
had  it  specially  made  for  her,  records  and  all;  paid 
first  rate  actors  to  spout  the  stuff  into  the  machine — 
Pll  tell  you  about  that  in  a  minute.  Well,  every 
Sunday  afternoon  I  used  to  spend  at  Blackheath 
with  miy  old  mother.  And  what  do  you  think  we 
talked  about?  My  operations!  She  knew  every 
one  of  'em  by  heart!  And  could  remember  'em 
years  afterwards.  My  hat!  what  a  woman  doctor 
she'd  have  made!  And  the  poetry!  Fond  of  it — 
I  should  just  think  she  was — she  could  reel  it  off  by 
the  yard!  Tip-top  stuff,  too,  Shakespeare  and 
Browning  and  all  that!    Knew  the  difference  between 

255 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

the  real  thing  and  the  confectionery — ^by  God! 
What  do  you  think  of  that^  my  hearty,  for  an  old 
washerwoman?  Nobody  would  believe  it — but  then, 
there's  lots  of  things  in  this  world  that  nobody  would 
believe,  as  you  know  well,  Johnnie  Polycarp.  Oh, 
she  was  a  great  woman,  was  my  mother,  and  be 
damned  to  her  good  old  soul!  Used  to  say  that 
my  operations  were  poems — reminded  her  of  Wil- 
liam Blake,  'Tiger,  tiger,  burning  bright' — you  know 
it?" 

"Yes,  I  know  it,"  said  Mr.  Polycarp.  "But  what 
has  all  this  to  do  with  your  prayers?" 

"Pm  coming  to  that.  What  are  you  in  such  a 
hurry  for?  Pm  not  gassin'.  Pm  getting  the  in- 
struments ready.  Well,  first  Pd  tell  the  old  gal 
about  my  operations  j  then  she'd  recite  her  poetry, 
and  after  that  we  had  a  bit  of  religion.  And  every 
time  she  kissed  me  good-bye  on  Sunday  afternoon 
she  said  the  same  thing.  'Bill,'  she  said,  'Bill,  my 
treasure,  never  touch  the  knife  without  first  going 
down  on  your  knees.'  I  promised  her  I  would — 
and  Pve  kept  my  word — and  mean  to!  Mark  that, 
you  sceptical  old  ignoramus!  And  if  you  want  my 
candid  opinion,  Pll  give  it  you!  I  owe  my  success 
more  to  what  my  old  mother  taught  me  than  to 
anything  else  in  this  world — more  than  to  anything 
else,  I  tell  you!" 

Several  times  Sir  William  repeated  the  words 
"more  than  to  anything  else."  And  Mr.  Polycarp 
observed  that  the  prominent  eyes  of  the  great  alienist 
had  become  moist. 

"We  live  in  a  queer  world,"  he  said. 

"We  do,"  said  Sir  William,  "and  here's  Miss 

256 


MISS  WOLFSTONE  AN  ADVENTURESS 

Wolfstone  to  make  it  queerer  still.     I  hear  the  car 
in  the  drive." 

A  minute  later  Miss  Wolfstone  entered  the  room. 

The  doctor  and  the  lawyer,  standing  on  either  side 
of  the  fireplace,  turned  swift  glances  of  inquiry 
upon  the  newcomer,  which  she  steadily  returned.  It 
was  a  pity  that  a  Recorder  of  Emotional  Disturb- 
ance was  not  in  the  room.  The  needle  would  have 
trembled  twice  j  first,  rather  violently,  for  Sir  Wil- 
liam Timbertreej  then  more  faintly,  for  Mr.  Poly- 
carp.  And  each  was  instantly  aware  that  he  had 
met  his  match — and  perhaps  something  more. 
"Candour,"  thought  Mr.  Polycarp,  "is  a  more  for- 
midable antagonist  than  cunning.  And  there 
it  is." 

Not  taking  the  chair  that  was  offered  her,  but 
placing  one  for  herself  at  the  end  of  the  table,  she 
sat  down,  her  arms  resting  on  the  table  and  hands 
clasped  in  front.  The  men  also  drew  up  chairs,  and 
a  glance  from  Timbertree  signalled  to  Polycarp  that 
it  was  for  him  to  begin. 

"Miss  Wolfstone,"  he  began,  "the  circumstances 
necessitating  this  interview,  which  we  thank  you  for 
granting  so  promptly,  are  these.  Mr.  Hooker  is  in 
danger  of  a  mental  breakdown.  In  spite  of  his  un- 
fitness for  so  doing,  he  is  determined  to  make  a  new 
Will;  and  Sir  William  has  decided  that  any  attempt 
to  thwart  him  in  this  matter  will  be  followed  by  the 
gravest  consequences.  In  that  event  his  wealth, 
which  you  know  is  enormous,  will  be  disposed  of 
under  his  old  Will  and  pass  to  the  Society  for  Ethi- 
cal Culture.  Do  you  know  any  of  his  motives  for 
wishing  to  alter  this  bequest?" 

257 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

"I  can  imagine  them,"  she  answered  j  "but  why 
do  you  ask  me?" 

"Because  under  the  new  Will  he  proposes  to 
make  you  will  become  his  heiress." 

The  two  men  looked  to  see  the  effect  of  this 
bombshell.  She  did  not  move,  and  except  for  a 
bright  smile  there  was  no  change  in  her  expression. 

"I  expected  this,"  she  said,  "or  something  like  itj 
I  am  not  unprepared.  But  the  matter  is  of  little  im- 
portance— I  mean,  to  me  personally.  A  Will  made 
under  these  conditions  is  invalid,  and  I  do  not  see  how 
you,  Mr.  Polycarp,  can  be  a  party  to  making  it." 

"You  state  the  difficulty  with  precision,"  said  Poly- 
carp. "But  the  alternative  to  making  this  Will  is 
that  Mr.  Hooker's  mind  will  give  way." 

"I  will  do  anything  to  prevent  that,"  she  said 
quietly  J  "he  is  one  of  my  dearest  friends." 

"In  that  case  we  must  ask  you  to  help  us,  and 
trust  to  your  discretion  in  carrying  through  a  some- 
what anomalous  transaction." 

"That  will  interest  me,"  she  replied,  "and  I  shall 
enjoy  being  trusted." 

"But  may  I  ask  why  you  expected  Mr.  Hooker  to 
do  this?" 

"He  allowed  me,  along  with  some  others,  to  ad- 
vise him  about  the  disposal  of  his  money  j  and  in- 
tending quite  otherwise,  I  wrote  him  a  letter  which 
I  now  see  would  have  precisely  this  effect  on  a  man 
of  his  temper  and  ideals,  especially  if  he  were  forced, 
to  make  a  sudden  decision.  And  I  have  other  reasons, 
which  may  be  summed  up  by  saying  that  between 
him  and  me  there  is  a  strong  link  of  personal  sym- 
pathy." 

258 


MISS  WOLFSTONE  AN  ADVENTURESS 

"Do  you  regret  writing  the  letter?" 

"Not  in  the  least." 

"I  wish  you  would  show  us  your  mind  more 
plainly,"  said  Sir  William,  speaking  with  a  more 
pronounced  Cockney  accent  than  usual.  "  'Ow  does 
this  news  affect  you  in  general?" 

"Much  as  I  should  be  affected  by  a  proposal  of 
marriage  from  Giant  Despair,"  was  the  quick  re- 
sponse. At  which  both  men  laughed,  Sir  William 
immoderately. 

"I  suppose.  Miss  Wolfstone,  you  would  refuse  the 
Giant,"  said  Polycarp.  "Are  you  going  to  refuse 
the  millions?" 

"I  am  not  going  to  run  away.  What  do  you  ad- 
vise, Sir  William?"  she  asked. 

"The  fact  is,"  said  Sir  William  in  a  confidential 
tone,  "the  fact  is,  we  are  between  the  devil  and  the 
deep  sea." 

"The  deep  sea  for  me,"  said  Miss  Wolfstone  in 
the  same  quiet  tone.     "I  can  swim." 

"You  look  as  though  you  could,"  replied  Sir  Wil- 
liam in  his  loud  voice.  "You  look  as  though  you 
could  swim  the  channel!  But  to  come  to  the  point. 
Miss  Wolfstone,  Mr.  'Ooker  wants  to  see  you.  He'll 
'ave  to  see  you.  Repression  at  this  stage  would  be 
fatal.  No  kid  about  it  at  all!  And,  what's  more, 
you'll  'ave  to  fall  in  with  his  wishes  to  the  letter. 
There's  no  choice  between  that  and  a  crisis.  Don't 
argue  with  him.  Don't  say  you'd  rather  not.  Don't 
try  the  Giant  Despair  stunt.  Give  in  all  round.  Say 
you're  pleased.  That  clears  the  way  for  the  next 
few  years,  and  then  you  and  he  can  come  to  what 
arrangement  you  like.     If  he  dies  in  the  meantime, 

259 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

which  is  not  likely,  then  it^s  a  lawyer's  job — not  my 
affair}  you  and  Mr.  Polycarp  and  several  more  will 
all  be  swimmin'  in  the  deep  sea  together  j  and  some 
of  you  will  get  drowned.  But  my  duty  is  to  Mr. 
'Ooker." 

"Do  you  agree  to  this,  Mr.  Polycarp?"  asked 
Miss  Wolfstone. 

"I  do.  At  the  same  time  I  must  point  out  that 
it  places  you  in  a  difficult  position." 

"You  mean,"  she  replied,  "that  I  shall  be  com- 
promised— that  nobody  will  ever  believe  that  I  had 
any  other  motive  than  to  obtain  possession  of  Mr. 
Hooker's  wealth,  and  that  people  will  suspect  me 
of  employing  the  means — well,  the  means  that 
women  always  employ — to  obtain  my  end?" 

"Precisely." 

"And  that  litigation  may  follow." 

"Not  if  I  can  avoid  it." 

"And  that  if  it  does  you  yourself  will  be  com- 
promised along  with  me." 

"Possibly." 

"And  you.  Sir  William?" 

"Write  me  off,"  said  Timbertree.    "I  do  my  duty 
to  the  patient,  and  don't  care  a  damn — excuse  me- 
what   happens  afterwards.      My  orders  are  given. 
And  the  sooner  they  are  carried  out  the  better." 

"Very  well,  then,"  said  Miss  Wolfstone.  "I  con- 
sent on  one  condition.  It  is  that  the  Will — the 
document — be  placed  in  my  keeping." 

The  lawyer  looked  at  the  doctor. 

"It's  up  to  you  to  answer  that,"  said  Timbertree. 
"Not  my  job." 

"Miss   Wolfstone,"   said  Polycarp,   "the   whole 

260 


MISS  WOLFSTONE  AN  ADVENTURESS 

situation  is  in  your  hands.  I  raise  no  objection  to 
your  keeping  the  Will,  provided  Mr.  Hooker  gives 
his  consent." 

"That  finishes  it,"  said  Timbertree.  "Miss  Wolf- 
stone,  I  shall  'ave  the  pleasure  of  showin'  you  to  Mr. 
'Ooker's  room." 

"Wait  a  moment,"  said  Polycarp.  "I  have  a  ques- 
tion to»ask.  Miss  Wolf  stone,  which  you  will  answer 
or  not  at  your  discretion.  But  under  the  circum- 
stances I  think  you  will  find  it  a  right  and  proper 
question  for  me  to  ask.  Assuming  you  become  pos- 
sessed of  this  immense  fortune,  have  you  any  plan, 
any  formed  idea,  as  to  what  you  would  do  with  it?" 

"Yes,"  she  answered.  "But  I  was  about  to  speak 
of  something  else.  I  shall  not  see  Mr.  Hooker, 
either  alone  or  otherwise.  Perhaps  you  will  be 
kind  enough  to  tell  him  what  I  have  said.  I  leave 
the  rest  entirely  in  your  hands." 

Sir  William  Timbertree's  red  face  turned  crimson. 
Banging  his  fist  on  the  table  he  cried  out: 

"I  say  you  must  see  him,  and  you  shall!" 

"At  that  point  the  deciding  voice  is  mine,"  she 
answered.  "I  am  sorry  to  disobey  you.  Sir  Wil- 
liam, but  at  this  moment  I  am  not  acting  under  your 
orders." 

And  without  the  least  trace  of  ill  humour  or 
affected  triumph  she  made  her  adieux  and  passed 
out  of  the  room. 

The  steam-roller,  brought  to  a  sudden  standstill, 
looked  a  derelict,  and  it  was  some  time  before  it 
showed  any  sign  of  renewed  activity. 

"Well,"  it  snorted  at  last,  "that's  a  corker  and  no 
mistake!" 

261 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

"She's  not  a  conspirator,"  said  Polycarp,  who 
seemed  to  have  some  difficulty  in  restraining  his 
mirth. 

"She's  a  thoroughbred!"  said  the  steam-roller. 

At  which  Mr.  Polycarp  could  restrain  himself  no 
longer.     When  it  was  over  he  said: 

"She  took  you  down,  Timbertree.  But  remember 
it  was  your  doing  and  not  mine  that  she  was  sent 
for." 

"She  did.  And  I  like  her  all  the  better  for  It. 
Look  'ere,  Polycarp.  If  trouble  comes  of  this — and 
when  it  does,  it  will  be  your  turn  to  look  a  fool — 
you'll  find  me  on  the  same  side  with  that  woman." 

"All  right  J  I  shall  not  forget  it.  But  give  me  an 
opinion.     Is  the  woman  an  adventuress?" 

"Yes:  and  one  of  the  right  sort,  too!  'Ooker 
knows  what  he's  doin'.  Didn't  I  tell  you  so?  What 
better  thing  could  he  have  done?  Answer  me  that, 
Mr.  Lawyer.  You  mark  my  word — if  she  gets  his 
money  she'll  set  things  'umming." 

"I'm  inclined  to  agree,"  said  Polycarp.  "At  all 
events  one  great  danger  has  been  averted." 


262 


CHAPTER  THREE 

And  Embarks  Forthwith  on  a  Dangerous  Adventure 

npWO  days  afterwards  Miss  Wolf  stone  was  in 
■^  her  study,  still  struggling  with  the  last  scenes 
of  her  Christmas  Play,  and  with  less  hope  than  ever 
of  moulding  them  to  her  liking;  for,  somehow,  the 
driving  power  was  gone.  She  was  interrupted  by  a 
gentle  tap  on  the  door,  and  bidding  the  visitor  enter 
Billie  Smith  appeared  on  the  threshold. 

"Oh,  Miss  Wolfstone,"  he  cried,  "we  couldn't  play 
that  game!" 

"What  game,  Billie,  and  who  couldn't  play  it?" 

"The  medicine-game.  Every  half-holiday  Ted 
and  I  and  five  other  boys  from  our  school  play  our 
plans  in  Mr.  Hooker's  big  field — not  the  one  with 
the  bull  in  it,  but  that  other  one  where  the  wood  is; 
you  know!  Father  says  that  unless  you  can  play 
your  plans  they  are  not  good  ones.  The  pirates 
played  well,  but  the  medicine  wouldn't  play  at  all." 

"Ah!  I  thought  you  would  get  into  difficulties 
with  that  medicine.     What  was  the  trouble?" 

"We  couldn't  keep  the  medicine  locked  tip.  The 
bad  people  got  it  every  time  and  gave  it  to  the  good 
ones.    Ted  and  I  played  the  bad  ones." 

"Do  you  know,  Billie,  I  saw  Mr.  Rumbelow  the 
other  day,  and  told  him  that  you  meant  to  give  him 
a  dose!" 

263 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

"Oh,  we've  altered  that,"  cried  Billie.  "We  are 
going  to  have  Mr.  Rumbelow  on  the  other  side. 
He's  good." 

"How  have  you  found  that  out?" 

"Because  you  wouldn't  have  saved  his  life  if  he 
had  been  bad.  You'd  have  saved  somebody  else 
and  let  him  drown.  Besides,  we  heard  Father  say 
he  isn't  as  bad  as  he's  painted.  But  what  did  Mr. 
Rumbelow  say?" 

"He  said  he  thought  you  were  a  rather  promising 
boy,  and  that  he'd  like  to  play  the  medicine-game 
with  you.  And  he  said  there  was  a  man  in  his  office 
who  had  a  secret  for  keeping  all  kinds  of  medicine 
locked  up  where  bad  people  couldn't  get  at  them." 

"Do  you  think  he'd  tell  it  to  us?" 

"No,  I  don't.  It's  a  very  great  secret.  If  I  were 
you  I  should  try  another  game." 

"Can  you  think  of  one?" 

Miss  Wolfstone  reflected  for  a  few  moments. 

"Well,  Billie,  what  do  you  say  to  the  League  of 
Nations?  You  can  get  your  father  to  tell  you  all 
about  it.  Let  me  see — there  are  seven  of  you.  Yes, 
just  right.  Each  of  you  can  be  one  of  the  Great 
Powers." 

"Splendid!"  said  Billie.  "I'll  be  England  and 
Ted  shall  be  France.     But  who's  to  be  Germany?" 

"You  will  have  to  draw  lots  for  that." 

"The  person  that  gets  Germany  will  be  in  a 
beastly  temper,  and  won't  play  fair,"  said  Billie. 

"That  will  only  make  it  more  life-like.  And, 
mark  my  word,  Billie,  unless  you  get  'Germany' 
out  of  his  beastly  temper  he  will  win  the  game." 

"Then   I'll  have  to  be  Germany  myself,"  said 

264 


A  DANGEROUS  ADVENTURE 

Blllie.  "The  other  fellows  would  never  under- 
stand that." 

"Good — and  come  and  tell  me  all  about  it  after- 
wards.    But  get  along  now.     I'm  very  busy." 

As  Billie  was  going  Miss  Wolfstone  called  after 
him: 

"There's  one  thing  I  forgot  to  say,  dear.  Mind 
you  don't  play  the  League  of  Nations  in  the  field 
where  the  bull  is!" 

"Oh,  we'll  not  do  that!  We  played  'the  Union 
of  the  Churches'  in  that  field,  and  the  bull  chased 
us  all  over  the  place." 

"Who  put  it  into  your  heads  to  play  'the  Union 
of  the  Churches'?" 

"There  was  a  man  gave  a  lecture  on  it  at  our 
school." 

When  he  was  gone  Miss  Wolfstone,  by  way  of 
restoring  the  interrupted  sequence  of  thought  and 
of  calming  her  merriment,  found  it  necessary  to 
light  a  cigarette.  But  the  effect  of  the  nicotine  was 
not  exactly  what  she  desired.  As  the  toxin  worked, 
her  mind,  instead  of  recovering  the  lost  thread, 
broke  out  into  a  new  direction  altogether.  She 
began  by  wondering  how  the  boys  would  play  the 
game  she  had  suggested,  and  from  that  she  passed 
to  asking  how  she  would  play  it  herself.  For  a 
moment  her  thought  centred  on  the  bull.  She  knew 
well  enough  what  she  had  meant  by  her  warning  to 
Billie.  But  then  the  thought  was  in  the  background 
of  her  mind  and  only  clear  enough  to  prompt  a  jestj 
now  it  rushed  into  the  foreground  and  became  full 
of  interest  and  significance,  and  began  to  multiply 
itself  into  a  whole  family  of  thoughts.     Little  by 

265 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

little  there  rose  before  her  the  vague  outlines  of  a 
dramatic  situation,  with  the  world  for  a  stage  and 
the  nations  for  actors,  and  behind  them  all  an  un- 
tamed and  brutal  force  with  which  in  the  last  resort 
they  must  all  do  battle  together — the  bull. 

And  the  war!  With  millions  of  others  she  had 
been  swept  into  the  conflict,  had  seen  its  horrors  on 
their  darkest  side,  had  felt  in  her  body  the  shock  of 
its  catastrophes.  There  was  one  view  of  it  that  had 
never  left  her,  that  seemed  to  sum  up  all  that  she 
had  read  in  books  or  experienced  in  her  own  per- 
son— the  impression  of  a  vast  inundation  of  forces 
which  outmatched  human  powers  of  control  and 
made  a  mock  of  all  who  pretended  to  control  them, 
out  of  hand  from  first  to  last,  submitting  here  or 
there  to  the  directing  touch  of  exceptionally  brave 
or  able  men,  but,  as  a  whole,  undirected  by  wit  or 
will,  forcing  its  own  way  forward,  imposing  con- 
fusion on  its  would-be  masters,  and  ending  at  last  in 
an  issue  which  none  had  foreseen  and  none  could 
claim  the  credit  for  having  brought  about. 

Then  thought,  still  keeping  the  same  structure, 
contracted  its  area.  This  problem  of  the  mil- 
lionaire's, in  which  her  own  life  was  becoming  en- 
tangled, what  was  it  but  the  characteristic  problem 
of  a  well-meaning  civilization  suddenly  endowed 
with  enormous  wealth  whicH  it  had  neither  the 
moral  nor  the  intellectual  powers  to  handle  aright? 
All  the  personifications  were  present.  Herself  to 
begin  with,  and  the  men  and  women  with  whom 
catastrophes  had  brought  her  into  contact:  Hooker, 
Rumbelow,  My  Lady,  Polycarp,  Timbertree,  the 
members  of  the  Ethical  Society,  were  they  not  all 

266 


A  DANGEROUS  ADVENTURE 

living  embodiments  of  the  elemental  powers  which 
make  history  through  their  impact  upon  one 
another?  She  had  no  need  to  go  far  for  materials. 
They  were  all  under  her  hand.  But  could  she  make 
use  of  them?  She  remembered  the  saying  of  the 
critic  that  no  woman  had  ever  been  a  great  drama- 
tist. But  such  generalizations  have  different  effects 
on  different  minds.  To  say  that  no  woman  has  ever 
done  this  or  that  may  discourage  the  timid,  but  to  a 
woman  of  high  mettle  it  is  an  incentive  to  break  the 
rule  by  doing  for  the  first  time  what  has  never  been 
done  before.  So  it  acted  on  Margaret  Wolfstone. 
Within  an  hour  of  Billie's  departure  a  new  vision 
of  her  life's  work  had  formed  itself  in  the  high 
heavens,  and  her  will  was  engaged  to  attempt  it — 
at  what  risk  of  disastrous  failure  she  well  knew. 

And  what  of  the  work  that  was  already  hers,  the 
work  of  education,  which  she  had  taken  up  not  as  a 
profession,  but  as  a  mission,  and  found  so  delightful, 
so  full  of  romance  and  unexplored  possibilities,  so 
rich  in  human  relationships,  so  amenable  to  the 
Great  Principle  of  Hooker  and  to  the  Great  Motto 
of  Rumbelow?  Would  she  be  renouncing  it?  By 
no  means.  Might  not  the  method  which  had  raised 
the  teaching  of  the  Smokeover  High  School  for 
Girls  to  a  higher  level  of  efficiency  than  that  of  any 
similar  school  in  the  kingdom  be  extended  to  a  wider 
field  and  developed  into  an  instrument  of  education 
for  the  whole  community?  Might  not  the  drama 
be  the  appointed  means  for  revealing  to  the  public 
mind  the  inner  significance  of  the  appalling  crisis 
through  which  the  world  had  just  passed,  and  which 
the  economists  and  the  moralists  and  the  political 

267 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

philosophers  and  the  Ethical  Societies  and  the 
Churches,  with  their  effete  and  ineffective  methods, 
had  wholly  failed  to  disentangle  and  express. 

It  was  a  daring,  extravagant  dream,  and  none  but 
an  adventuress  would  have  entertained  it.  But 
entertain  it  she  did.  Here  was  a  possible  use  for  Mr. 
Hooker's  millions,  whether  they  remained  his  or 
whether  they  became  hers.  Most  assuredly  she 
would  tell  him  about  it  forthwith.  And  she  would 
tell  Rumbelow.  She  would  engage  the  interest  of 
both  of  them  to  her  scheme — a  new  application  for 
the  Great  Principle  and  the  Great  Motto!  The  last 
especially  came  back  to  her  mind,  and  she  repeated 
it  aloud  several  times.  She  remembered  the  first 
occasion  she  had  heard  it  from  the  lips  of  the  book- 
maker. She  was  supporting  him  in  the  water,  and 
with  infinite  difficulty  had  drawn  a  life-belt  over 
his  head  and  fixed  it  under  his  arms,  when  Rum- 
below, his  teeth  chattering  with  the  cold,  managed 
to  articulate  before  they  drew  him  on  board,  "Ideal 
aims,  businesslike  methods  and  sportsmanlike  prin- 
ciples." Well,  she  was  in  deep  waters  again,  and 
the  Motto  gave  her  comfort  as  she  measured  her- 
self against  her  task. 

When  the  Christmas  Play  was  produced  in  due 
course  by  the  girls  of  the  High  School  it  had  a  cold 
reception  from  the  critics.  The  first  two  acts,  they 
said,  were  up  to  the  level  of  previous  plays  and 
were  in  Miss  Wolfstone's  usual  style,  full  of  high 
spirits,  fun  and  idealism.  But  in  the  last  act  there 
was  an  unaccountable  falling  off,  as  though  the 
writer  were  unequal  to  the  crisis  her  imagination  had 

268 


A  DANGEROUS  ADVENTURE 

developed.  The  dialogue,  which  had  been  easy  and 
natural  up  to  that  point,  seemed  to  halt,  the  action 
became  uncertain,  the  characters  lost  their  distinc- 
tiveness, the  conclusion  was  hurried  and  unconvinc- 
ing. Miss  Wolfstone  acknowledged  the  truth  of 
these  criticisms.  "I  knew,"  she  said,  "that  I  was 
out  for  a  duck!  But  the  girls  were  waiting  to  re- 
hearse and  the  thing  had  to  go  on.  I  shall  do  better 
next  time." 

Now  there  was  in  the  city  of  Smokeover  a  certain 
newspaper  called  The  Tracker^  which  appeared  every 
week.  It  subsisted  in  large  measure  on  scraps  of 
carrion  picked  up  in  the  servants'  halls  of  the  neigh- 
bourhood, and  made  a  handsome  living  for  its  owners 
by  appealing  to  the  meanest  recesses  of  human  na- 
ture. In  the  art  of  spitting  venom  while  pretending 
to  do  something  else  it  had  developed  an  ingenuity 
that  would  have  done  credit  to  the  Serpent  of  Eden 
after  it  had  been  turned  into  a  toad.  In  actions  for 
libel  The  Tracker  rejoiced j  they  were  excellent  ad- 
vertisements and  increased  the  circulation  far  out 
of  proportion  to  the  damages  the  proprietors  had  to 
pay.  There  were  thousands  of  men  and  women  and 
boys  and  girls  in  Smokeover  who  may  be  said  to 
have  been  brought  up  on  The  Tracker;  they  read  it 
through  from  cover  to  cover  every  week,  and  they 
real  little  else.  So  much  at  least  they  owed  to  the 
benevolent  system  under  which  they  had  been  taught 
to  read  at  the  public  expense. 

To  Miss  Wolfstone  and  her  Christmas  Play  The 
Tracker  devoted  a  whole  column  of  innuendo,  di- 
viding it  up  into  paragraphs  with  three  asterisks 
at  the  end  of  each,  and  challenging  an  action  for  libel 

269 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

in  every  one.  The  Tracker  wanted  to  know  what 
truth  there  was  in  the  rumour  that  of  late  she  had 
become  a  frequent  visitor  in  the  houses  of  "our  two 
leading  millionaires."  It  was  known  of  course  that 
she  had  saved  the  life  of  one  of  them,  an  act  of  gal- 
lantry which  might  form  the  beginning  of  a  sensa- 
tional novel.  But  the  case  of  the  other  was  not  so 
clear,  unless  it  might  be  assumed  that  Miss  Wolf- 
stone  had  entered  his  sick-room  in  the  capacity  of 
nurse,  which  The  Tracker  understood  she  had 
abandoned  on  accepting  her  present  position.  Now 
that  the  invalid  was  completely  recovered,  and 
happily  in  a  position  to  enjoy  the  modest  profit  he 
had  made  out  of  the  war,  it  was  to  be  presumed  that 
he  would  no  longer  need  the  professional  attend- 
ance of  Miss  Wolfstone.  The  Tracker  would  like 
to  know  whether  her  attendance  up  to  date  had  been 
gratuitous  or  whether  there  had  been  a  fee< — and  if 
so,  how  much?  If  the  other  millionaire  would 
prefer  to  have  these  questions  addressed  to  him. 
The  Tracker  would  have  no  objection  to  make  the 
change.  Perhaps  one  or  the  other  of  them  would 
explain  to  the  public  whether  these  things  had  any 
connexion  with  the  remarkable  fit  of  absence  of 
mind  in  which  "our  gifted  headmistress"  appeared 
to  have  written  the  concluding  portion  of  her 
Christmas  Play?  And  a  copy  of  the  paper,  with 
the  passage  marked  in  blue  pencil,  was  sent  to  every 
member  of  the  Council  of  the  High  School  for 
Girls. 

The  professional  scandalmongers  were  joined  by 
a  host  of  amateurs.  Perhaps  through  the  ministra- 
tions of  key-hole  listeners  in  Mr.  Hooker's  domestic 

270 


A  DANGEROUS  ADVENTURE 

establishment,  perhaps  through  the  indiscretions  of 
the  port-drinking  doctor,  enough  spicy  material  was 
soon  forthcoming  to  provide  the  tongue  of  gossip 
with  a  tempting  theme.  Miss  Wolfstone  was  one 
of  those  women  whose  fate  it  is  to  be  as  much  hated, 
among  their  own  sex,  by  whose  who  know  them 
through  description  and  report,  as  they  are  beloved 
by  those  who  know  them  through  personal  contact. 
Speaking  generally,  the  women  of  Smokeover  were 
none  too  well  disposed  to  the  headmistress}  not  be- 
cause they  doubted  her  high  gifts,  but  because  they 
were  forced  to  acknowledge  them,  a  state  of  things 
which  is  even  more  dangerous  to  a  good  reputa- 
tion among  women  than  it  is  among  men.  This  was 
the  soil  into  which  the  insane  root  of  calumny  first 
struck  its  fibres.  There  were  stories  about  her 
"goings-on"  with  the  wounded  officers  while  in 
charge  of  the  hospital  in  France — a  laugh  with  one, 
a  jest  with  another,  a  gesture  with  a  third,  a  cigarette 
smoked  with  a  fourth — which  stories,  being  raked 
together,  were  woven  into  a  coherent  ^vhole  by 
venomous  imaginations.  The  fact  that  she  had  saved 
the  bookmaker's  life  was  emphasized  and  added  to 
the  rest;  and  the  vilest  interpretation  was  put  upon 
it  by  shrugged  shoulders,  pursed-up  lips  and  averted 
eyes.  Then  a  rumour  got  abroad  that  she  had  been 
asked  to  resign  by  the  Ethical  Society,  and  that  Rum- 
below  was  in  some  way  connected  with  it;  at  which 
Virtue  pulled  its  longest  face.  And  who  had  not 
observed  the  change  in  her  manner,  her  look  of  pre- 
occupation as  she  walked  the  streets,  the  frequency 
with  which  she  would  pass  acquaintances  without 
noticing  them — plain  proofs  of  a  guilty  mind?     On 

271 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

all  these  grounds  Miss  Wolfstone's  reputation  was 
open  to  assault,  and  what  more  delightful  occupation 
for  little  minds  and  evil  tongues  than  to  assault  it? 
Not  that  the  purveyors  of  the  garbage  viewed  their 
own  actions  in  this  light.  On  the  contrary,  they 
believed  themselves  to  have  "ideal  aims."  Heaven 
knows  they  had  "businesslike  methods."  But  for 
want  of  "the  sportsmanlike  principle"  their  virtue 
became  vice. 

Once  started  the  slander  had  to  run  its  course. 
It  grew  and  multiplied  and  spawned  by  all  the 
modes  of  growth  and  reproduction  known  to  the 
student  of  low  organisms,  sometimes  by  fission  like 
a  polyp,  sometimes  by  endless  extension  like  a  tape- 
worm. For  a  time  Margaret  Wolfstone  was  the 
most  talked-of  woman  in  Smokeover.  The  kindest 
thing  her  detractors  could  find  to  say  was  to  call  her 
an  adventuress  of  the  most  dangerous  type — the 
keyhole  listeners  in  Mr.  Hooker's  house  could 
prove  that! 

Yet  unkindness  was  not  always  safe,  especially  if 
that  one-armed  officer  happened  to  be  within  hear- 
ing j  Miss  Wolfstone's  friends,  though  few,  were 
not  to  be  tampered  with!  One  night  there  was  a 
dreadful  scene  in  the  Conservative  Club,  when  a 
local  Member  of  Parliament,  having  spoken  a  little 
too  loudly,  learnt  from  the  shattering  blow  that 
fell  on  his  lying  mouth  that  one  arm  can  sometimes 
strike  with  the  strength  of  two.  Yes,  you  had  to 
be  careful.  The  one-armed  officer  struck,  indeed, 
for  Miss  Wolfstone's  honour,  but  it  may  be  doubted 
if  he  served  her  cause.  For  when  men  fight  about 
a  woman,  the  presumption  generally  is  that  she  is 

272 


A  DANGEROUS  ADVENTURE 

no  better  than  she  ought  to  be.  This,  at  all  events, 
was  the  interpretation  which  the  evil  minds  of 
Smokeover  put  upon  the  gallant  officer's  well-meant 
intervention. 

And  now  history  quickened  her  slow  paces,  and 
things  began  to  move.  The  Tracker  was  instantly 
on  the  scent,  hopes  of  an  action  for  libel  running  high 
in  the  editor's  noble  breast.  This  gentleman,  who 
had  studied  the  art  of  journalism  in  America,  wrote 
the  article  with  his  own  hand.  "Great  Fight  for  a 
Schoolmistress  between  a  Member  of  Parliament 
and  a  Lieutenant-General" — such  was  the  fascinat- 
ing headline.  The  Tracker  began  by  reminding  its 
readers  of  the  function  it  had  long  fulfilled  as 
guardian  of  the  public  morals  of  Smokeover;  "nor 
shall  we  shrink  from  doing  our  duty  on  the  present 
occasion,  painful  as  it  is  to  our  personal  feelings, 
dangerous  as  it  may  be  to  our  private  interests." 
Then  followed  a  string  of  pompous  imbecilities  in 
the  style  of  Mr.  Podsnap  which  meant,  in  form, 
that  The  Tracker  was  actuated  by  the  purest  mo- 
tives; in  substance,  that  it  was  going  to  do  a  dirty 
trick.  After  which  it  got  to  business.  With  a  fine 
sense  of  historical  analogy.  The  Tracker  pointed  out 
that  this  was  the  second  Great  Fight  which  had 
stirred  the  moral  indignation  of  the  Smokeov^er 
public  within  the  space  of  a  month.  The  first  i.-ii 
taken  place  on  a  solemn  occasion  in  the  cem(„tc-y, 
of  which,  it  would  be  remembered,  The  Tracker 
had  secured  the  earliest  authentic  information,  with 
the  result  that  a  clergyman,  unworthy  of  his  cloth, 
had  been  dismissed  from  his  post.  The  Tracker  was 
far  from  suggesting  that  the  two  Fights  were  con- 

273 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

nected,  though  the  lady  who  figured  so  prominently 
in  the  second,  and  had  a  careless  habit  of  leaving  her 
note-hooks  lying  about,  was  in  all  probability  not 
unacquainted  with  the  facts  of  the  first.  Then  fol- 
lowed a  description  of  the  scene  in  the  Conservative 
Club,  and  the  article  wound  up  by  proclaiming  in 
language  of  great  dignity  that  the  whole  incident 
was  an  eloquent  sign  of  the  times.  It  proved  among 
other  things  that  the  spirit  of  romance,  which  the 
war  had  done  so  much  to  stimulate  in  the  gentler 
sex,  was  beginning  to  invade  our  system  of  High 
School  education,  whether  to  the  moral  advantage 
of  the  daughters  of  Smokeover  their  parents  would 
now  be  in  a  position  to  judge. 

The  parents  were  not  slow  in  acting  upon  the 
hint.  A  few  of  the  most  "particular"  removed  their 
daughters  from  the  High  School  at  once.  Then, 
one  by  one,  the  less  "particular"  began  to  follow  their 
example  3  at  first  giving  a  term's  notice  with  no  rea- 
son assigned  J  then  notice  with  the  reasons  dimly 
hinted  J  then  no  notice  with  the  reasons  boldly  stated. 
Matters  looked  serious.  The  Treasurer,  who  had 
been  in  high  jinks  since  Miss  Wolf  stone  took  com- 
mand, began  to  tremble  for  his  balance  sheet;  the 
shareholders  were  alarmed  j  the  Council  was  gravely 
perturbed.  A  special  meeting  was  summoned  to 
consider  the  crisis. 

It  has  already  been  noted,  as  a  characteristic  of 
Miss  Wolfstone's  relations  with  others,  that  her 
friends  were  devoted  and  her  enemies  implacable. 
On  the  present  occasion  devoted  friends  were  not 
wanting,  of  whom  the  radical  lawyer  of  the  Ethical 
Society  was  the  chief.    The  enemy  presented  his  case 

274 


A  DANGEROUS  ADVENTURE 

in  splashes,  which,  when  taken  singly,  were  lurid 
enough,  but,  when  pieced  together,  yielded  no  co- 
herent or  intelligible  picture.  The  lawyer  had  no 
difficulty  in  tearing  it  to  shreds,  and  for  the  moment 
the  enemy  seemed  not  only  discomfited  but  ashamed 
of  himself. 

But,  alas!  the  moment  came  when  the  "sound 
political  sense,"  for  which  the  public  life  of  Smoke- 
over  is  famous,  reared  its  portentous  head  amid  the 
confusion  and  began  to  assert  itself.  A  gentleman 
of  irreproachable  life,  with  a  marked  tendency  to 
begin  and  end  all  his  arguments  with  negative  prop- 
ositions, got  upon  his  feet.  He  declared  that  the 
question  before  them  was  not  one  of  persons,  but 
one  of  "principles"  and  of  "policy" — and  from  the 
emphasis  with  which  the  last  word  was  spoken  one 
might  have  guessed  that  something  mean  was  about 
to  be  born.  They  must  not  concentrate  too  much 
attention  on  Miss  Wolfstone  as  an  individual.  Per- 
haps Miss  Wolfstone  was  a  slandered  woman;  for 
his  part  he  was  not  prepared  to  say  she  was  not.  But 
he  would  not  answer  for  the  public.  The  meeting 
must  take  a  broader  view.  They  had  the  interests  of 
the  school  to  consider.  They  had  the  susceptibilities 
of  the  parent  to  consider.  They  had  their  own  re- 
sponsibilities to  the  public  to  consider.  They  had 
the  moral  effect  on  the  girls  to  consider.  The  mere 
fact  that  Miss  Wolfstone  was  an  object  of  suspicion, 
that  mud  was  being  thrown  at  her,  was  enough  to 
condemn  the  "policy"  of  her  friends.  Their  atti- 
tude was,  no  doubt,  generous,  but  it  was  not  practical. 
It  was  essential  that  the  character  of  the  headmistress 
of  a  school  like  this  should  be — etc.,  etc.     In  short, 

275 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

he  begged  to  move  that  Miss  Wolfstone's  services 
be  not  retained. 

Professor  Pawkins  rose  in  support  of  the  last 
speaker.  He  said  he  had  never  believed  in  Miss 
Wolfstone's  methods  of  education.  From  the  first 
he  had  condemned  them  as  flashy  and  unsound.  He 
was  only  too  familiar  with  her  play-acting  methods 
of  dealing  with  morality  j  she  had  introduced  them  at 
the  Ethical  Society,  with  disastrous  results  on  the 
minds  of  several  of  the  members.  Introduced 
among  girls,  especially  among  adolescent  girls,  he- 
had  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  their  eifect  would  be 
poisonous.  He  believed  that  Miss  Wolfstone's  in- 
fluence was  altogether  bad.  He  had  always  pre- 
dicted that  the  recent  prosperity  of  the  school  would 
collapse,  and  he  was  glad  the  collapse  had  come 
before  further  mischief  had  been  done.  There  was 
another  circumstance  to  which  he  desired  to  call 
their  attention,  and  he  was  astounded  that  it  had  not 
been  remarked  upon  before.  The  incident  of  her 
saving  the  life  of  Rumbelow,  a  highly  doubtful 
service  to  humanity,  had  surrounded  her  personality 
with  a  false  glamour,  and  he  was  sorry  to  find  that 
several  members  had  evidently  been  influenced  by 
it  in  her  favour.  But  what  were  the  facts?  He 
himself  had  made  careful  inquiries  into  the  circum- 
stances of  that  incident  and  he  had  been  fortunate 
enough  to  get  the  evidence  of  an  eyewitness.  The 
ship  was  sinking  by  the  starboard  side,  on  which  she 
had  been  torpedoed,  and  on  that  side  over  thirty 
wounded  oflicers  were  struggling  in  the  water. 
Rumbelow,  by  some  chance,  had  been  blown  into 
the  water  on  the  other  side.     Miss  Wolfstone  had 

276 


A  DANGEROUS  ADVENTURE 

been  left  on  deck.  What  did  she  do?  According 
to  his  informant  she  ran  along  the  starboard  sidej 
coldly  inspecting  the  crowd  of  drowning  men  as 
though  she  were  looking  for  somebody,  and  paying 
not  the  slightest  heed  to  their  appalling  cries  for 
help.  Then  she  clambered  to  the  other  side,  and 
seeing  Rumbelow,  instantly  dived  into  the  sea  and 
saved  him — a  man  who,  in  the  judgment  of  all 
right-thinking  persons,  was  one  of  the  greatest 
villains  of  modern  times.  What  trust  could  they 
place  in  the  moral  instincts  of  a  woman  who 
could  make  a  selection  like  that?  He  seconded  the 
resolution. 

Miss  Wolf  stone's  friends  continued  to  fight  j  they 
fought  to  the  last  ditch,  but  the  petty foggers  were 
too  many  for  them.  That  fatal  tendency  of  cor- 
porate bodies,  by  which  the  best  is  driven  down  to 
compromise  with  the  worst  until  agreement  is 
reached  on  the  vulgar,  carried  the  day.  "Policy" 
triumphed  5  the  resolution  was  passed. 

W^hen  Margaret  Wolf  stone  learnt  her  fate  she 
knew,  of  course,  that  her  reputation  was  besmirched, 
that  her  career  as  a  teacher  of  girls  was  ruined,  that 
her  dismissal  would  set  the  seal  of  truth  upon  slander 
and  never  be  forgotten  as  long  as  she  lived.  To  say 
that  all  this  caused  her  no  pain  would  be  far  from 
the  truth.  She  was  deeply  hurt,  but  without  indig- 
nation, without  dismay  and  without  pity  of  herself 
as  a  tragic  personality.  She  belonged  to  that  high 
race  of  mortals  to  whom  pain  is  a  right  to  be  em- 
braced rather  than  a  terror  to  be  run  away 
from. 

Far  more  vivid  than  her  sense  of  wrong  was  her 

277 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

consciousness  of  unexhausted  powers.  In  the  vision 
of  a  great  achievement  yet  to  be  accomplished,  the 
strife  of  which  she  was  centre  lost  much  of  its  im- 
portance and  some  of  its  reality.  She  had  a  mighty 
instrument  in  her  hand  which  she  was  learning  to 
use,  and  with  which  she  had  so  far  only  played.  So 
that,  if  there  was  one  sense  in  which  she  cared,  there 
was  another  in  which  she  hardly  cared  at  all.  The 
real  world  for  her  at  that  moment  was  that  in 
which  her  imagination  was  at  workj  the  half  real 
that  where  her  honour  was  being  attacked.  She 
had  refused  to  take  the  step,  which  some  of  her 
friends  had  urged  upon  her,  of  voluntarily  resign- 
ing. She  was  not  the  woman  to  take  herself  or  her 
fellows  or  the  half-reality  called  Smokeover  too 
seriously,  and  her  bright  laugh  broke  out  more  than 
once. 

Nevertheless  there  were  some  painful  scenes. 
One  occurred  in  the  big  schoolroom  when  she  took 
leave  of  the  remaining  girls.  High  School  girls  are 
not  given  to  making  riots,  but  they  came  near  to 
making  one  that  day.  There  was  another  in  her 
private  room  when  the  assistants  came  to  bid  her 
good-bye.  They  were  all  leaving,  they  said.  One, 
a  dark-eyed  Frenchwoman,  stayed  behind  when  the 
others  were  gone  and  passionately  flung  herself  into 
Miss  Wolfstone's  arms.  Then  for  the  first  and  only 
time  she  broke  down  and  the  two  women  mingled 
their  tears. 

A  week  later  she  was  in  Rumbelow's  Castle  lean- 
ing over  the  terrace  and  looking  out  on  a  sunny  land- 
scape bounded  by  blue  hills.     My  Lady  was  seated 

278 


A  DANGEROUS  ADVENTURE 

by  her  side,  her  lustrous  eyes  watching  her  com- 
panion. 

"I  am  wondering,"  said  Miss  Wolfstone,  "why  I 
came  to  grief  so  completely  in  the  last  act  of  my 
Christmas  Play." 

"Dearest  Margaret "  My  Lady  began.     But 

she  said  no  more.  The  rest  of  the  reply  was  a 
smile,  which  flashed  across  her  face  like  a  message 
from  a  hidden  world. 

Thus  ended  the  Legend  of  Margaret  Wolfstone. 

And  now  the  Author  began  to  observe  a  certain 
similarity  in  all  these  endings.  Wondering  what  this 
might  meany  he  resolved  to  try  the  Communicator 
with  questions — a  risky  exferim^ent y  as  all  clair- 
audients  know. 

"What  message  from  the  hidden  world y^  he 
asked y  "did  My  Lady^s  smile  convey?" 

"Wait  and  see,"  said  the  retreating  Voice. 

"When  shall  I  learn"  shouted  the  Author — for 
the  Voice  was  now  a  great  way  off — "when  shall  I 
learn  what  Mr.  Hooker  did  with  his  millions?" 

"To-night." 

Then  the  cock  creWy  the  sun  came  wpy  and  the 
Author y  keenly  expectant y  went  his  way.  The  next 
night^s  Entertainment  answered  his  questions. 


219 


PART  FOUR 
The  Legend  of  Professor  Ripplemark 


CHAPTER  ONE 

The  Emergence  of  Professor  RIpplemark 

THOUGH  Mr.  Hooker  had  been  forbidden  by 
his  doctor  to  take  any  part  in  business  or  public 
life  for  three  months,  he  nevertheless  managed  to 
keep  himself  closely  informed  of  the  events  which 
ended  in  the  dismissal  of  Margaret  Wolfstone.     So 
deep  was  his  concern  in  the  issue  that  he  did  not 
hesitate  to  break  orders,  writing  urgent  letters  in 
defence  of  the  accused  to  the  members  of  the  Coun- 
cil and  to   others.     Under  ordinary  circumstances 
these  letters  would  have  carried  weight.     But  as  it 
was,  his  intervention,  like  that  of  the  one-armed 
officer,  did  Miss  Wolfstone  more  harm  than  good. 
For,  just  as  her  reputation  for  womanly  virtue  was 
under  a  cloud,  so  was  his  for  male  judgment  and 
sound  common  sense.     Rumour  now  reported  him 
under  the  influence  of  women,  and  under  treatment 
by  a  mental  specialist.     Moreover,  his  partiality  for 
Miss  Wolfstone  was  known.     In  addition  to  all 
which  Mr.  Hooker  was  now  in  high  disfavour  with 
the  Ethical  Society,  which  was  strongly  represented 
on  the  Council,  and  especially  with  Professor  Paw- 
kins,  who  frankly  represented  him  as  insane.     For 
these  reasons  it  would  have  been  better  for  Miss 
Wolfstone  if  Mr.  Hooker  had  said  nothing. 

Mr.  Hooker  was  one  of  the  gentlest  spirits  that 

283 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

ever  drew  the  breath  of  life.  His  toleration  as  a 
friend,  his  leniency  as  a  magistrate,  were  known  to 
all  men.  For  the  weakness  of  mortal  flesh,  for  the 
rebellions  and  escapades  of  the  natural  man,  he  had 
no  condemnation.  When  he  sat  upon  the  bench  the 
heart  of  the  poacher  leaped  for  joyj  he  would  shed 
tears,  instead  of  passing  judgment  over  the  servant 
girl  or  the  munition  worker  charged  with  conceal- 
ing a  birth  j  and  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  the 
"drunks  and  disorderlies"  loved  him.  He  had  a 
horror  of  prisons  and  of  the  prison  system,  and  put 
an  interpretation  on  the  delinquencies  of  police- 
court  offenders  that  made  it  easier  for  them  to  sin 
no  more.  But  if  turpitude  stalked  abroad  or 
hypocrisy  showed  its  double  face,  a  sword  would 
flash  out  and  the  wicked  would  tremble  for  his  soul. 
When  such  things  confronted  Mr.  Hooker  his 
moral  indignation  was  terrible  to  see.  His  eyes 
gleamed  lightnings,  his  massive  brows  were  clouded 
with  thunderstorms,  and  he  became  as  one  into  whose 
hands  it  were  a  fearful  thing  to  fall. 

When  the  circumstances  of  Miss  Wolfstone's  dis- 
missal were  reported  to  him  he  rose  up,  therefore, 
like  a  man  of  wrath,  invective  poured  from  his  lips 
and  his  very  servants  quailed  in  his  presence.  "When 
the  boss  opened  his  letters  this  morning,"  said  the 
butler,  "blest  if  I  didn't  think  the  Day  of  Judgment 
had  come  full  clap."  Chafing  under  his  restraints 
nothing  could  prevent  him  using  his  pen.  Like  the 
editor  of  The  Tracker y  but  for  difi^erent  reasons,  Mr. 
Hooker  would  have  welcomed  an  action  for  libel. 
To  the  members  of  the  Ethical  Society  who  had 
taken  part  in  the  dismissal  he  wrote  in  terms  which 

284 


PROFESSOR  RIPPLEMARK  EMERGES 

must  have  suggested,  even  to  their  emancipated 
minds,  that  the  Day  of  Judgment  was  a  reality.  For 
the  first  time  they  learnt  to  their  immense  surprise 
of  his  original  intention  to  make  the  Society  his 
residuary  legatee  j  they  learnt  also  that  he  regarded 
them  as  men  of  inverted  conscience,  and  that  they 
had  forfeited  both  his  respect  and  his  fortune. 
"Your  action  in  attacking  Miss  Wolfstone,"  he  wrote 
to  Professor  Pawkins,  "especially  the  construction 
you  placed  on  her  motive  for  saving  Rumbelow, 
reveals  a  mind  whose  moral  structure  I  shrink  from 
contemplating.  Let  the  day  perish  in  which  such 
a  deed  was  done!" 

To  Miss  Wolfstone  he  wrote: 


"My  dear  Margaret, 

"Moriturus  te  salutat.  To-day  I  have  re- 
ceived from  the  Directors  of  my  Firm  a  long  letter, 
full  of  tergiversation  and  false  reasons,  which  mean, 
when  reduced  to  plain  terms,  that  I  am  to  be  ex- 
cluded henceforth  from  all  active  participation  in 
business  on  the  ground  that  I  am  regarded  as  insane. 
It  is  a  new  link  between  us.  We  are  both  outcasts  j 
you  as  a  wicked  woman,  I  as  an  imbecile.  But, 
sursum  cor  da! 

"The  circumstances  of  your  dismissal  have  almost 
turned  me  into  a  hater  of  my  kind.  I  had  not 
deemed  it  possible  that  human  nature  could  clothe 
itself  in  such  infamy.  But  I  have  my  consolations. 
When  I  think  of  you  and  of  Rumbelow  and  of  My 
Lady  I  know  that  the  ultimates  are  secure.  Were  I 
worthy  of  such  high  company  I  would  say,  *Let  us 

285 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

form  a  League  of  Outcasts  and  front  the  world 
together.' 

"I  have  just  been  studying,  after  a  lapse  of  thirty 
years,  the  life  and  sayings  of  the  founder  of  Chris- 
tianity. What  a  splendid  creation  he  was!  How  he 
would  have  lashed  Pawkins!  And  what  a  tragedy 
that  a  spirit  so  exalted  should  find  himself  in  a 
world  like  this!  They  ought  to  have  sent  him  to 
another  and  a  better  planet.  Do  read  his  parable 
of  the  wicked  husbandmen.  It  is  your  story  as  well 
as  His — the  story  of  the  everlasting  conspiracy  of  the 
base  against  the  noble.  But  nothing  can  break  them! 
They  rise  again  after  three  days.    So  will  you. 

"One  thing  greatly  comforts  me.  More  and  more 
I  am  learning  the  insignificance  of  that  end  of  life 
where  these  vile  things  are  done.  The  very  people 
who  do  them,  the  Pawkins'  and  the  rest,  are  gibber- 
ing ghosts.  They  are  not  realy  Margaret,  and  that 
is  what  we  mean  when  we  call  them  humbugs.  Treat 
them  as  phantasmal,  as  incapable  of  knowing  what 
they  do,  and  find  your  real  world  in  the  great 
achievements  that  are  awaiting  you. 

"I  need  not  bid  you  be  afraid  for  nothing.  But 
remember  that  in  whatever  you  attempt,  whether  in 
education,  as  I  hope,  or  in  literature,  which  is  nearly 
the  same  thing,  the  whole  of  my  resources  are  behind 
you.  Afiirm  your  personality  in  your  own  way  and 
trust  me  to  back  you.  It  will  be  the  joy  of  my  de- 
clining years,  a  kindness  done  by  you  to  me  beyond 
the  reach  of  my  gratitude  to  repay." 

Not  many  days  afterwards,  as  Mr.  Hooker  was 
eating  his  solitary  breakfast  and  reading  The  Times 

286 


PROFESSOR  RIPPLEMARK  EMERGES 

Literary  Supplement  at  the  same  time,  his  eye  was 
caught  by  the  following,  among  the  "preliminary 
notices"  of  books  that  had  just  appeared: 

*^The  Moral  Will:  a  Treatise  on  Ethical  Psy- 
chology. By  Maurice  Rippletnark,  LL.D.,  Regius 
Professor  of  Virtue  in  the  University  of  Oxford. 
This  book,  which  we  intend  to  review  at  length  later 
on,  reveals  on  a  first  survey  matter  of  the  deepest 
interest.  The  author's  name  alone  carries  great 
weight.  And  the  circumstance  that  Professor 
Ripplemark  was  awarded  the  V.C.  for  a  deed  of 
exceptional  gallantry  at  the  battle  of  the  Somme  will 
no  doubt  increase  his  circle  of  readers.  We  know  of 
no  other  work  in  philosophy  the  author  of  which 
could  write  the  letters  LL.D.  and  V.C.  at  the  end 
of  his  name." 

Mr.  Hooker  immediately  wrote  down  the  name 
of  the  book  on  a  slip  of  paper  and  said,  handing  it 
to  Robert  the  butler: 

"Give  this  paper  to  Jenkins  and  tell  him  to  take 
the  small  car  into  town  at  once  and  get  that  book 
for  me  at  Quin's." 

The  man  took  the  slip  and  made  his  way  to 
the  garage,  where  the  chauffeur  was  washing  the 
cars. 

"You've  got  to  scoot,"  said  Robert.  "He  wants 
that  book  from  Quin's.   Flash  of  lightnin',"  he  says. 

"Damn  his  books! "  replied  the  chauffeur.  "That's 
the  fourth  time  he's  sent  me  to  Quin's  this  week. 
What  book  does  he  want  now?" 

"I  dunno.  You  can  see  for  yourself.  It's  on  that 
paper." 

The  chauffeur  glanced  at  the  slip: 

287 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

"Blest  if  the  old  joss  isn't  goin'  to  make  another 
Will!"  he  said. 

"I  could  ha'  told  you  that,"  answered  Robert. 
"Polycarp  was  here  the  other  day,  and  that  clipper 
schoolmistress  as  was  fired  for  'anky-panky  with  the 
orficers.  I  'eard  all  about  Vr  when  I  was  in  the 
'ospital  at  Boolong.     There's  a  game  on,  my  boy." 

Mr.  Jenkins  did  not  deign  to  notice  this  last  re- 
mark. In  his  universe  there  was  "a  game  on" 
everywhere.  That  one  should  be  going  on  in  Mr. 
Hooker's  house  gave  it,  in  his  eyes,  no  significance 
out  of  the  ordinary.  So  he  returned  to  the  former 
point. 

"It's  a  new  sort  o'  Will  he's  going  to  make  this 
time.  Look  at  that,  Robert!  'The  Moral  Will.' 
See  what  he's  up  to?" 

"  'The  Moral  Will'— what  sort  of  a  Will's  that, 
Jenk?" 

"Oh,"  said  the  chauffeur,  "it  means  'orspitals  and 
the  Life  Boat  and  the  Railway  Orphanage,  and  a 
tight  'and  on  the  women,  and  all  that.  I  always 
knew  he'd  do  something  silly  with  that  con- 
science of  his.  When  a  bloke's  got  a  conscience,  I'm 
not  takin'  any,  I  tell  you  that!  They're  a  tricky 
lot.  Don't  trust  'emj  that's  my  advice,  I  know 
'em!"  And  he  flung  a  bucket  of  water  at  the  wheels 
of  the  car. 

"Does  a  Moral  Will  mean  anythink  for  us?" 
asked  Robert. 

"A  bit,"  said  Jenkins,  in  a  tone  of  contempt. 
"They  don't  leave  much  to  the  servants  in  Moral 
Wills — at  least  not  as  a  rule.  It  all  goes  to  Char- 
ities.   Give  me  a  real  gentleman's  will,  that's  what  I 

288 


PROFESSOR  RIPPLEMARK  EMERGES 

say!  Why,  there  was  Lord  Timbertree — brother 
to  that  red-faced  doctor  as  come  here — all  them. 
Timbertrees  was  born  in  the  gutter — made  his  money 
in  bottled  stout,  he  did,  and  rare  good  stuff  it  was, 
and  many  a  glass  o£  it  I've  had,  and  I  wouldn't 
mind  blowin'  the  froth  off  one  at  this  minute — died 
of  good  living,  he  did,  so  they  said — well,  did  you 
see  his  Will  in  the  paper  last  week?  Two  thousand 
to  his  'ousekeeperj  five  hundred  apiece  to  every 
servant  as  'ad  been  with  him  seven  years — and  ten 
thousand  to  the  lady's  maid!  Put  that  in  your 
pipe,  Mr.  Robert,  and  smoke  it!  And  then  you'll 
know  what  a  real  gentleman's  Will  ought  to  be  like." 

"I'll  give  you  a  tip,  Jenk,"  said  the  other.  "If 
you  want  him  to  leave  you  anythink,  don't  tell  him 
what  you  won  on  the  St.  Leger." 

"And  don't  you  tell  him,"  retorted  Jenkins,  "what 
you  won  on  that  little  sweepstake  you  got  up  last 
week  in  the  'all." 

"Look  here!"  said  the  discomfited  Robert.  "I'll 
bet  you  three  to  one  in  quids  that  I'll  find  out  in  a 
fortnight  if  he's  going  to  leave  anythink  to  «j." 

"How  are  you  goin'  to  do  that?" 

"Easy.  When  he  reads  a  book,  he  always  marks 
the  bits  he  likes  in  pencil.  See  him  do  it  'undreds  o' 
times.  I'll  look  'em  over  in  The  Moral  Will  before 
he  comes  down  in  the  morning.  And  if  I  can't  find 
out  that  way,  I  know  another.  'Ave  you  never 
'eard  him  talkin'  to  himself?  Three  to  one  on  it, 
Jenk,  and  no  kid!" 

"Get  out!"  said  Jenkins  as  he  mounted  the  car. 
"We'll  not  know  who's  won  till  he's  dead,  you  big 
son  of  a  blunderbuss!    I'm  not  goin'  to  wait  till  then. 

289 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

A  bet  like  that  isn't  worth  a  blow  of  my  'orn!  You 
go  and  learn  what  bettin'  is."  And  he  drove  off, 
with  the  order  for  The  Moral  Will  in  his  waistcoat 
pocket. 

Mr.  Hooker's  manner  of  reading  a  book  was  in- 
tense, methodical  and  conscientious.  He  sat  upright 
before  his  desk,  disdaining  arm-chairs,  a  large  ivory 
paper  knife  in  his  left  hand,  a  gold  pencil  in  his 
right  and  the  sober  spirit  of  his  Quaker  ancestry  in 
control  of  every  feature  in  his  face.  As  he  read 
he  would  beat  time  with  the  paper  knife,  holding 
it  like  a  conductor's  baton.  Now  and  then  he  would 
lean  back  in  his  chair,  resting  the  point  of  the  paper 
knife  on  a  particular  passage  in  the  text,  turning  his 
head  slightly,  with  a  keen  sidelong  glance  fixed  on 
the  words  indicated  by  the  knife.  After  which  he 
would  lean  over  his  book  and,  with  the  tip  of  his 
tongue  between  his  lips,  draw  a  firm  line  at  the  side 
of  the  important  passage,  perhaps  adding  a  note,  in 
a  very  fine  hand,  on  the  margin.  His  sense  of  duty, 
always  apparent,  was  never  more  active  than  when 
he  was  thus  engaged.  He  held  it  a  stern  obligation 
to  pay  the  closest  attention  to  the  written  word,  and 
would  often  comment  on  the  scampering  slap-dash 
method  of  reading,  now  so  common,  as  one  of  the 
peculiar  immoralities  of  the  present  age.  Especially 
when  a  book  of  philosophy  was  in  question.  On  these 
occasions  his  insistence  on  "the  rigour  of  the  game" 
was  as  uncompromising  as  Mrs.  Battle's. 

For  several  days  we  see  Mr.  Hooker  thus,  im- 
mersed in  the  study  of  The  Moral  Willy  his  mind 
steeled  against  all  other  preoccupations  and  his  five 

290 


PROFESSOR  RIPPLEMARK  EMERGES 

senses  almost  out  of  commission.  Many  sounds  are 
in  the  air,  some  sweet,  some  shrill,  some  sonorous  j 
but  he  hears  them  not.  The  great  clock  made  by  his 
grandfather,  with  "Thomas  Hooker,  Smokeover," 
printed  in  beautiful  old  letters  on  the  dial,  ticks  in 
the  corner  5  the  canary  sings  in  its  cagej  the  peacocks 
cry  on  the  terrace  j  the  wind  sighs  in  the  great 
cedars  J  the  cocks  crow  on  the  Home  Farmj  the 
watch  dog  barks  by  the  stable  door.  Mr.  Hooker 
pays  no  heed.  Every  sense,  every  faculty,  is  ab- 
sorbed in  The  Moral  Will. 

But  when,  through  the  open  window,  there  comes 
the  whirr  of  the  mowing  machine  on  the  tennis  lawn 
below,  where  now,  alas!  no  tennis  is  played,  we 
observe  that  the  swaying  of  the  paper  knife  suddenly 
stops  and  that  Mr.  Hooker  looks  up  and  listens. 
What  is  he  thinking?  He  is  thinking  of  three  tall 
boys  in  white  flannels  who,  till  the  last  syllable  of 
Time  has  been  recorded,  will  play  tennis  no  more. 
Then  Mr.  Hooker  resumes  the  study  of  The  Moral 
Will)  and  some  minutes  elapse  before  the  ivory  knife 
recovers  its  even  sway. 

Had  Mr.  Hooker  read  Professor  Ripplemark's 
work  before  the  evil  days  came  upon  him  he  would 
have  been  first  astonished,  then  impatient,  then 
angry,  and  perhaps,  in  one  of  those  fits  of  indigna- 
tion to  which  his  high  nature  was  prone,  would  have 
flung  the  volume  into  the  flames.  But  a  man  who 
has  been  salted  with  fire  will  endure  many  things 
that  the  unsalted  cannot  away  with,  and  may  even 
be  indulgent  to  originality  in  a  moralist.  Cer- 
tainly this  book  was  original  enough  to  ruin  the  repu- 
tation of  any  philosopher.     It  was  lively  at  those 

291 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

points  where  most  thinkers  are  tiresome  j  it  was  dar- 
ing where  they  are  overcautious.  Where  they  walk, 
it  ran,  where  they  trot  on  asses,  it  soared  on  eagles' 
wings,  where  they  drive  a  hearse,  it  drove  a  fiery 
chariot  behind  the  coursers  of  the  sun.  It  abounded 
in  the  work  of  the  imagination  j  there  were  pages 
which  only  needed  the  transposition  of  a  few  words 
to  become  blank  verse  j  there  were  Great  Presences 
which  stalked  through  the  book  like  Titans  on  the 
mountain  topsj  there  were  battles  and  strange  ad- 
ventures and  tales  of  discovery  j  and  the  chapter  on 
Death,  which  ended  the  book,  was  like  the  close  of  a 
great  symphony. 

Professor  Ripplemark  laid  it  down  that  the  Moral 
Will  was  the  private  possession  of  no  man,  but  a 
copartnership  of  reciprocally  interacting  personal- 
ities. Of  course  everybody  had  heard  that  before. 
But  the  way  in  which  the  Professor  dealt  with  his 
"copartnership  of  reciprocally  interacting  person- 
alities" was  certainly  new.  He  said  its  form  might 
be  compared  with  that  of  a  Business  Incorporation, 
a  Trust  in  the  real  sense  of  the  word,  with  a  com- 
petent Directorate  to  manage  its  affairs  j  and  he 
quoted  the  saying  "Make  to  yourselves  friends  of 
the  mammon  of  unrighteousness,  that,  when  ye 
fail,  they  may  receive  you  into  everlasting  habita- 
tions." 

When  Mr.  Hooker  came  to  the  chapter  on  "The 
Board  of  Directors"  the  point  of  his  ivory  paper 
knife  was  on  the  page  at  every  line. 

The  ideal  Board  of  Directors  for  moral  enterprise 
in  a  world  such  as  ours,  said  the  Professor,  should  be 
composed  of  six  persons :    ( 1 )  A  Business  Expert — 

292 


PROFESSOR  RIPPLEMARK  EMERGES 

with  all  the  sciences  at  his  elbow j  (2)  An  Artist — 
preferably  in  the  realms  of  literature j  (3)  A  Moral- 
ist of  the  Old  School;  (4)  An  Enthusiast  for  Educa- 
tion; (5)  A  Seer  J  (6)  A  Gentleman  of  Sporting 
Instincts. 

These  are  the  elements  to  constitute  a  Moral  Will 
at  the  point  which  the  history  of  civilization  has  now 
reached.  They  actually  exist,  in  abundance,  in  mod- 
ern society.  But  they  meet  at  no  Common  Board 
and  transact  no  common  business;  they  act  singly; 
and  for  that  reason  they  are  ineffective  and  the 
Moral  Will  does  not  arise.  Each  by  himself  is  a 
failure.  The  Moralist  of  the  Old  School,  by  him- 
self, is  a  dotard.  The  Business  Expert,  by  himself, 
is  a  rascal.  The  Artist,  by  himself,  is  a  decadent. 
The  Enthusiast  for  Education,  by  himself,  teaches 
nonsense.  The  Seer,  by  himself,  is  a  humbug.  The 
Gentleman  of  Sporting  Instincts,  by  himself,  is  a 
swindler.  The  value  of  each  Director  depends  on 
the  other  Directors  who  sit  with  him  at  the  Board. 

Very  curious,  too,  was  the  Professor's  treatment 
of  the  various  "interactions"  going  on  at  his  Board. 
At  first  the  Moralist  of  the  Old  School  and  the 
Gentleman  of  Sporting  Instincts  had  immense  diffi- 
culty in  understanding  one  another.  But  the  prob- 
lem was  tackled,  and  at  last  each,  under  the  influence 
of  the  other,  became  so  transfigured  that  he  hardly 
knew  himself.  So  with  all  the  others.  The  Artist 
and  the  Business  Expert  thought  they  could  never 
agree;  but  they  did;  and  then  the  pair  of  them  set 
to  work  on  the  Moralist  and  the  Gentleman,  and 
there  was  a  further  transfiguration  of  all  four  of 
them.     So  on  till  all  the  possible  combinations  were 

293 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

exhausted  and  the  whole  Board  was  finally  trans- 
figured into  the  reality  of  the  Moral  Will. 

Among  the  passages  in  Ripplemark's  work  which 
Mr.  Hooker  scored  with  his  gold  pencil  was  one  of 
some  length,  against  which  he  had  written  several 
marks  of  exclamation  and  a  marginal  note  of  strong 
approval.    It  ran  as  follows: 

"Along  with  the  desire  for  an  ordered  existence, 
which  is  one  of  the  chief  objects  of  the  Moral  Will, 
there  are  powerful  tendencies  in  human  nature  work- 
ing in  a  contrary  direction.  The  risks  and  uncertain- 
ties of  life  are  not  uncongenial  to  the  mind  of  man, 
which  at  this  point,  as  at  many  others,  shows  signs 
of  adaptation  to  a  world  of  sudden  and  unexpected 
vicissitudes.  The  prevalence  of  the  gambling  habit 
in  all  ages,  and  its  diffusion  among  all  classes  of 
society,  indicates  that  risk  may  itself  become  an 
object  of  desire  apart  from  any  contingent  prospect 
of  gain.  On  this  account  it  is  to  be  doubted  whether 
mankind  would  be  satisfied  with  an  assured  and 
orderly  existence,  even  if  it  could  be  achieved.  For 
example,  careful  observers  have  noted  the  fact  that, 
whenever  economic  changes  raise  wages  to  a  level 
which  assures  the  workers  against  want,  an  outbreak 
of  gambling  immediately  follows.  And,  in  general, 
assured  conditions  of  well-being  are  precisely  those 
which  men  seem  most  willing  to  stake  on  the  issue 
of  uncertain  events.  A  fixed  sum  is  more  easily  used 
as  a  gambling  counter  than  one  which  is  fluid  and 
uncertain.  A  thing  may  be  too  precious  to  riskj  but, 
again,  it  may  be  just  precious  enough  to  be  worth 
risking  for  its  double.  Hence  there  is  truth  in  the 
saying  that  a  society  where  a  modest  well-being  was 

294 


PROFESSOR  RIPPLEMARK  EMERGES 

guaranteed  to  everyone  would  be  a  paradise  for  the 
bookmakers.  .  .  .  Until  this  tendency  to  prefer  the 
uncertain  to  the  certain  is  eliminated  from  human 
nature — of  which  there  seems  little  prospect — no 
system  of  distributing  wealth  is  likely  to  give  stable 
results.  It  would  always  be  at  the  mercy  of  experts 
in  the  science  of  probability.  The  estimation  of 
what  are  called  chances  has  indeed  a  scientific  basis, 
but  it  seems  also  to  demand  a  power  akin  to  that  of 
genius  in  the  artist.  There  is  nothing  in  which  men 
differ  more  widely  than  in  the  degree  of  this  power 
they  severally  possess  j  whence  it  is  easy  to  imagine 
a  state  of  society  otherwise  well  ordered  in  which 
the  men  who  possess  this  power  in  the  highest  degree 
would  be  completely  masters  of  the  situation.  .  .  . 
This  possibility  has  not  been  sufficiently  considered 
by  those  who  maintain  that  the  social  problem  will 
be  solved  when  present  forms  of  exploitation  are 
abolished.  Much  more  dangerous  forms  of  exploi- 
tation are  possible  than  any  which  revolutionary 
Socialism  is  now  seeking  to  overthrow.  The  gam- 
bling tendencies  of  mankind  are  the  easiest  to  exploit; 
and  men  who  are  capable  of  exploiting  them  will 
never  be  difficult  to  find.  Conceivably  these  men 
might  make  themselves  masters  of  the  world." 

Mr.  Hooker  sat  spellbound.  What  was  the  origin 
of  this  passage?  What  could  have  suggested  a  line 
of  thought  so  unusual  in  a  Regius  Professor  of 
Virtue?  Mr.  Hooker's  suspicions  were  awakened. 
Could  it  be  that  Rumbelow,  in  his  many  wanderings 
round  the  world,  had  come  into  contact  with  Ripple- 
mark?  Could  it  be  that  the  bookmaker  had  opened 
the  Professor's  mind  at  this  point,  by  showing  him 

295 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

some  actual  instance  of  the  obstinacy  of  the  gambling 
habit,  such  as  he  himself  had  witnessed  on  the  night 
of  the  railway  accident?  Why,  of  course!  Had 
not  both  men  served  in  the  war?  And  had  not  Miss 
Wolfstone  told  him  that  Ripplemark  had  passed 
through  her  hospital  at  Boulogne?  As  Mr.  Hooker 
fixed  his  eyes  on  the  startling  passage  the  bold  eyes 
of  Rumbelow  seemed  to  be  looking  at  him  from  the 
page. 

For  a  long  time  Mr.  Hooker  sat  pondering  this 
passage  and  reading  it  over  and  over  again.  At  last 
he  determined  to  probe  the  matter  to  the  bottom. 
He  would  send  a  telegram  to  Professor  Ripplemark, 
asking  him  for  an  interview  in  Oxford  on  the  earliest 
convenient  opportunity. 

Next  morning  he  was  up  betimes,  and  had  no 
sooner  finished  his  breakfast  than  the  book  was 
again  in  his  hand.  Turning  up  the  critical  pas- 
sage he  was  greatly  annoyed  to  see  on  the  margin 
the  brownish  imprint  of  a  large  and  very  dirty 
thumb,  almost  obliterating  one  of  his  finely  written 
notes. 

Now,  if  there  was  any  small  thing  in  this  world 
that  could  rouse  the  well-governed  passions  of  the 
millionaire,  it  was  the  sight  of  a  blot  or  a  defilement 
on  the  pages  of  his  books.  He  violently  rang  the 
bell,  and  the  butler  appeared. 

"Did  you  wash  yourself  this  morning,  sir?"  said 
the  stern  voice  of  his  master. 

"Yes,  sir,"  said  the  trembling  menial. 

"Then  perhaps  you  will  explain  how  you  came 
to  put  your  dirty  fingers  on  The  Moral  Will? 

"Never  touched  the  book,  sir." 

296 


a 


PROFESSOR  RIPPLEMARK  EMERGES 

"How  do  you  know  that  I  am  talking  about  a 
book?" 

"See  the  name  on  the  back,  sir.  It's  not  me,  sir. 
It  must  have  been  one  of  the  maids  as  dusts  the 
room." 

Mr.  Hooker  held  up  the  incriminating  evidence 
before  the  pale  face  of  Robert. 

"These,"  he  said,  "are  not  the  thumb  marks  of  a 
woman.  Besides,  they  show  signs  of  tobacco  juice. 
Your  own  fingers  are  deeply  stained  with  it  at  this 
moment.  You  smoke  too  many  cigarettes.  You 
have  not  washed  yourself  this  morning,  sir.  You 
have  told  me  two  lies  in  the  space  of  half  a  minute. 
Tell  me  no  more!" 

Mr.  Hooker  was  quite  capable  of  decisive  language 
when  morality  was  in  question.  The  butler  said 
nothing,  and  his  face  was  that  of  a  sheep. 

"And  now,"  Mr.  Hooker  went  on,  "I  wish  to  know 
why  you  are  interested  in  The  Moral  Will.  Your 
finger  marks  are  all  over  the  book." 

"Well,  sir,"  said  Robert  in  a  hurried  voice,  "Pll 
tell  you  the  honest  truth.  It's  all  along  of  Mr. 
Jenkins,  sir.  Mr.  Jenkins  has  been  savin'  his  wages 
ever  since  he  come  into  your  service,  sirj  and  some- 
body's been  tellin'  him  he  ought  to  make  his  will. 
He's  been  worried  about  it,  bein',  as  you  know,  sir, 
a  very  partickler  man.  ^Robert,'  he  says  to  me,  *I 
want  to  make  a  good  will,  a  will  as'll  show  people 
when  I'm  dead  that  I've  been  a  moral  man.'  Well, 
sir,  you'll  remember  as  'ow  you  give  Mr.  Jenkins  the 
name  of  the  book  on  a  piece  of  paper  to  take  to 
Quin's.  When  he  come  home  he  says  to  me, 
^Robert,'  he  says,  *I  believe  that  book  would  help 

297 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

me.  It's  about  a  Moral  Will.  Take  a  dip  into  it 
whenever  you  can  and  see  if  you  can  find  out  any- 
thing that  would  show  a  man,  as  wants  to  leave  a 
hunblemished  character  behind  him,  how  to  do 
his  duty?'  And  that,  sir,  is  a  full  and  truthful 
explanation  of  my  conduct,  sir.  A  man  has  feel- 
in's,  sir,  especially  towards  his  fellow-servants, 
sir." 

For  some  moments  Mr.  Hooker  looked  the  butler 
steadily  in  the  face.  Then,  in  a  quiet  but  terrible 
voice: 

"You  have  been  lying,"  he  said. 

"Sir "  said  the  butler. 

"You  are  about  to  lie  again,"  replied  Mr.  Hooker. 

"Then,"  said  the  man,  changing  his  voice  to  a 
snarl,  "you  can  take  a  month's  warning  on  the  spot." 

Without  another  word  the  butler  slunk  out  of  the 
room.  Mr.  Hooker  rang  the  bell  that  connected  the 
library  with  the  garage.  Presently  the  chauffeur 
entered. 

"Jenkins,"  said  Mr.  Hooker,  "take  the  small  car 
to  Quin's  immediately  and  get  me  another  copy  of 
The  Moral  Will.  And  take  this  copy  to  the  back 
premises,  soak  it  in  petrol  and  set  it  on  fire." 

There  are  some  men  who  are  most  offended  by 
the  large-scale  evils  of  the  world — by  the  spectacle 
of  festering  slums  and  of  multitudes  that  are  as 
sheep  without  a  shepherd,  by  fields  of  battle  soaked 
in  blood,  by  streets  thronged  with  prostitutes,  by  the 
prisons  where  Society,  in  the  name  of  right,  perpe- 
trates a  stupid  and  enormous  wrong.  There  are 
others  who  stumble  most  heavily  when  their  feet 

298 


PROFESSOR  RIPPLEMARK  EMERGES 

Strike  upon  minor  treacheries,  upon  meanness  in  the 
grain.    Mr.  Hooker  was  one  of  these. 

When  the  chauffeur  was  gone  he  sank  into  a  chair 
and  showed  the  countenance  of  a  man  in  despair,  of 
a  victim  to  black  thoughts  and  to  dangerous  exag- 
gerations. Had  a  pessimist  entered  the  room  at  that 
moment  and  expounded  the  vanity  of  all  ideals, 
the  futility  of  all  gospels,  the  illusoriness  of  human 
progress  in  general,  he  would  have  found  the  mil- 
lionaire a  sympathetic  hearer. 

"What  difference  does  it  make,"  he  was  asking 
himself,  "to  a  man  like  Robert,  and  to  the  immense 
multitudes  of  which  he  is  a  sample,  whether  Pro- 
fessor Ripplemark  defines  the  Moral  Will  as  *a 
copartnership  of  reciprocally  interacting  person- 
alities,' or  as  anything  else  you  please?  What  differ- 
ence would  it  make  to  him — to  them — if  Ripple- 
mark had  put  a  *not'  into  his  definition?  Or  if 
all  the  philosophers  and  moralists  in  the  world  were 
to  revise  their  systems  and  to  put  ^nots'  into  every 
sentence  where  they  don't  exist,  and  delete  them  from 
every  sentence  where  they  do?  No  difference  what- 
soever. He  and  his  like  are  as  little  affected  by 
these  things  as  if  they  happened  on  the  other  side  of 
the  moon.  Yet  they  are  the  very  people  who  need 
affecting.  The  ^great  ideas'  have  been  in  the  world 
for  thousands  of  years,  leavening  the  mass,'  ^filter- 
ing down  into  the  common  mind,'  and  all  the  rest  of 
it.  By  this  time,  one  would  think,  they  ought  to  have 
reached  Robert  the  butler.  They  have  not.  The 
thing  he  represents  remains  untouched  and  impreg- 
nable, a  mass  of  immovable  ignorance,  of  blind  habit, 
and  a  greater  factor  in  the  life  of  the  world  than 

299 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

all  the  philosophies  of  life.  And  what  hope  is 
there  that  the  next  *great  idea' — Ripplemark's  or 
Rumbelow's  or  anybody's — will  fare  better  than  its 
predecessors?  How  little  do  the  teachers  of  man- 
kind realize  their  impotence  to  move  the  world! 
How  exaggerated  their  hopes!  How  false  their  ex- 
pectations! How  ready  they  are  to  swallow  the 
foolish  tributes  that  are  paid  to  their  importance — to 
believe,  for  example,  that  the  whole  planet  trembles 
every  time  one  of  them  is  let  loose  upon  its  surface! 
The  stupid  flood  pursues  its  course,  never  chang- 
ing its  direction,  while  they,  like  children,  sail 
their  toy  ships  in  the  quiet  backwaters  and  think 
they  are  battle-fleets  destined  to  conquer  the  uni- 
verse. So  it  has  been  from  the  beginning.  So  it 
will  be  to  the  end!  What  a  farce!  Nay,  what  a 
tragedy!" 

A  look  of  pain  passed  over  Mr.  Hooker's  features. 
For  his  thoughts  had  taken  another  turn,  more  pre- 
cise in  its  self-accusation. 

"For  two  years,"  they  went  on,  "I  have  had  that 
despicable  rascal  in  my  service  and  been  in  personal 
contact  with  him  every  day.  And  I,  all  the  time, 
have  been  vapouring  about  moral  ideals,  the  progress 
of  humanity,  the  perfectibility  of  man  and  what  not 
other  nonsense,  oblivious  that  the  ^humanity'  which 
needs  reforming  was  standing  behind  my  chair  with 
a  napkin  on  its  arm — and  a  lie  in  its  heart — it  and  I 
as  remote  from  one  another  as  if  we  had  been  living 
on  two  different  planets,  with  forty  million  miles  of 
space  between  us!  Where  in  the  world  is  there  a 
greater  fool,  a  greater  humbug,  than  I  have  been 
and  still  am?     And  to  this  humbug,  to  this  fool,  has 

300 


PROFESSOR  RIPPLEMARK  EMERGES 

now  fallen  the  problem  of  administering  one  of  the 
greatest  fortunes  of  modern  times.  What  likeli- 
hood is  there  that  I  shall  end  otherwise  than  by  mak- 
ing myself  a  spectacle  to  the  gods?" 

And  Mr.  Hooker  laughed  in  the  bitterness  of  his 
heart. 

Then,  suddenly,  he  bethought  him  of  Miss  Wolf- 
stone's  play — Who  is  My  Neighbour? — a  type- 
written copy  of  which  was  lying  on  the  table  at  his 
side.  He  took  it  up  and,  for  the  third  time,  read  it 
through  from  beginning  to  end. 

When  he  had  finished  you  would  have  seen  that  a 
change  for  the  better  had  taken  place  in  Mr. 
Hooker's  countenance.  It  had  lost  its  look  of  anger 
and  of  pain. 

"How  true  that  is!"  he  said  aloud.  "And  yet 
how  feeble  the  ending  of  the  play.  I  wonder  why? 
There  is  something  incomplete  in  that  woman's  life." 

He  was  still  wondering  why,  when  a  servant  en- 
tered the  room  and  handed  him  a  parcel  tied  up  in 
brown  paper.  He  carefully  untied  the  string — for 
it  was  a  rule  with  the  millionaire  never  to  cut  a 
string  that  could  be  untied — took  out  a  clean  copy 
of  The  Moral  Will  by  Professor  Ripplemark,  and 
after  glancing  at  the  title  page,  which  seemed  to 
interest  him,  laid  it  gently  on  the  top  of  Miss  Wolf- 
stone's  play,  already  deposited  on  the  table  by  his 
side.  Then  he  leaned  back  in  his  chair,  clasped  his 
hands  behind  his  head,  and  resumed  his  meditations. 

Suddenly,  as  though  a  bright  thought  had  struck 
him,  he  jumped  up,  went  to  his  bookcase,  took  down 
Who*s  Who,  and  turned  up  the  name  of  Maurice 
Ripplemark,   LL.D.,   V.C.     In   five   minutes   Mr. 

301 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

Hooker  had  learnt  by  heart  all  that  Who^s  Who  had 
to  tell  him  about  the  gallant  Professor — his  parent- 
age, his  birthplace,  his  age,  his  family  connexions, 
his  University  honours,  and  his  favourite  recreation, 
which,  said  the  authority,  was  "flying."  As  Mr. 
Hooker  closed  the  book  he  took  a  deep  breath  and 
uttered  an  exclamation.  "Ha!"  he  cried.  And  he 
repeated  "Ha!"  again  and  again,  each  "Ha!"  with  a 
deeper  breath  and  a  more  emphatic  note. 

At  the  last  exclamation  Mr.  Hooker  crossed  the 
room  with  a  rapid  step  towards  the  great  window  of 
his  library,  and  standing  there  in  his  favourite  atti- 
tude, hands  behind  his  back,  looked  out.  For  the 
first  time  he  noticed  a  thing  of  which  till  that  mo- 
ment he  had  been  completely  oblivious.  The 
weather  was  changed.  The  sullen  clouds  which  had 
smothered  Smokeover  for  so  many  days  had  dis- 
persed, the  sun  shone,  a  soft  wind  blew,  and  a  thrush, 
thinking  that  spring  was  come,  sang  lustily  from  a 
neighbouring  tree.  And  Mr.  Hooker,  in  the  ex- 
uberance of  the  moment,  gave  utterance  to  an  ex- 
pression he  seldom  used: 

"Thank  God!" 

The  truth  is  that  there  had  just  come  to  Mr, 
Hooker  one  of  the  cogent  inspirations  of  his  life, 
with  a  plan  of  action  and  a  resolution  in  its  train.  Or 
shall  we  say  that  a  knot  had  suddenly  untied  itself, 
of  which  his  recent  untying  of  the  string  round  The 
Moral  Will  had  been  a  kind  of  symbol  or  premoni- 
tion, arranged  for  their  own  amusement  by  the  In- 
visible Powers? 

For  some  time  afterwards  you  might  have  seen 
the  millionaire  pacing  his  library,  a  liberated  and  re- 

302 


PROFESSOR  RIPPLEMARK  EMERGES 

joicing  man,  his  features  aglow  with  the  look  of 
exaltation  they  had  not  worn  since  he  discovered 
the  Unreal  End  of  Things  in  the  Smokeover 
Cemetery. 

"I  must  get  further  information  at  once,"  he  says 
aloud.     "I  must  consult  Rumbelow  and  My  Lady." 

He  goes  to  his  telephone,  takes  the  instrument  in 
his  hand,  pauses  for  a  moment  to  reflect,  and  then, 
quickly  replacing  it,  rings  off. 

"No,"  he  says,  "the  emotional  disturbance  would 
be  too  great.  I  must  find  a  mediator — Mr.  Hot- 
black,  of  course!" 

He  seizes  the  telephone  again.  "Will  Mr.  Hot- 
black  dine  with  him,  alone,  in  this  house,  to-night?" 
Mr.  Hotblack  will  be  delighted. 


303 


CHAPTER  TWO 

Mr.   Hooker  Verifies  an  Intuition 

"TT  was  nine  o'clock  in  the  evening  j  the  millionaire 
■^  and  his  guest,  both  in  spotless  evening  dress, 
which  Mr.  Hooker  seemed  the  more  accustomed  to 
wearing,  had  finished  their  mealj  the  cloth  was  re- 
moved, and  two  pot-bellied  decanters  of  cut-glass, 
one  containing  excellent  port,  the  other  incomparable 
madeira,  were  placed  on  the  shining  mahogany.  Each 
was  offered  to  Mr.  Hotblack  in  turn  and  declined  by 
the  cautious  psychologist.  Mr.  Hooker  then  re- 
placed the  stoppers  and  pushed  the  decanters  to  a 
safe  distance.  Whereupon  both  gentlemen  filled 
their  glasses  with  water. 

No  sooner  had  the  black-visaged  butler  relieved 
them  of  his  unwelcome  presence,  than  Mr.  Hotblack, 
after  looking  round  the  room  to  assure  himself  that 
they  were  alone,  opened  the  conversation  as  follows: 

"I  understand,  sir,  that  your  interview  with  Sir 
"William  Timbertree  was  satisfactory." 

"Entirely  so,"  replied  Mr.  Hooker.  "And  more 
than  satisfactory.  I  believe  that  I  have  found  a  new 
friend  in  Sir  William — a  valuable  acquisition  to  a 
man  whose  friends  are  not  numerous.  We  spent  two 
hours  in  close  conversation.  I  discovered  that  Sir 
William,  beneath  an  exterior  which  some  people 
would  find  offensive,  and  which  I  confess  tried  me  at 

304 


AN  INTUITION  VERIFIED 

moments,  has  many  fine  qualities.  In  particular, 
he  revealed  himself  as  a  man  of  deep  filial  piety — 
which  I  strongly  suspect,  Mr.  Hotblack,  is  the  source 
of  that  m.ystical  element  which  you  rightly  mentioned 
as  one  of  his  peculiarities.  He  told  me  of  his  rela- 
tions with  his  mother,  who  appears  to  have  been  a 
remarkable  woman — one  of  the  many  remarkable 
women  the  world  knows  nothing  of — though  again 
I  must  confess  that  some  of  the  epithets  he 
applied  to  her  were  quite  astounding.  But  I  have 
no  doubt  that  Sir  William,  who  is  a  master  in  his 
own  business,  introduced  this  topic  with  a  pur- 
pose." 

Here  Mr.  Hotblack  slowly  nodded  his  head  sev- 
eral times,  with  the  air  of  a  man  thoroughly  familiar 
with  the  purpose  in  question. 

"After  that,"  Mr.  Hooker  continued,  "Sir  William 
and  I  diverged  to  other  topics.  As  you  may  imagine, 
he  was  not  long  in  finding  a  way  to  his  favourite 
theme,  to  which  you  referred  at  our  last  meeting — 
the  tendency  of  the  group  mind  to  deteriorate  into 
imbecility,  a  tendency  which  increases,  so  he  said, 
in  proportion  to  the  largeness  of  the  group.  Sir 
William,  I  found,  is  an  advocate  of  the  small  group 
as  against  the  large  one.  In  this  also  we  were  in 
complete  accord.  About  my  own  condition  he  said 
nothing  at  all  until  he  was  in  the  act  of  leaving  the 
room.  He  then  paused  for  a  moment  at  the  door, 
and  after  asking  me  if  I  ever  played  golf  on  Sun- 
days, told  me  in  effect — I  am  sorry  to  say  his  actual 
words  are  quite  unquotable — that  he  would  give  the 
people  who  had  raised  the  question  of  my  sanity  a 
piece  of  his  mind.     In  the  same  breath  he  asked  me 

305 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

for  his  cheque,  which  our  interesting  conversation 
had  unfortunately  caused  me  to  forget." 

Mr.  Hotblack  was  not  insensible  to  the  humour  of 
Mr.  Hooker's  narrative,  and  at  the  end  could  not 
restrain  himself  from  one  of  those  violent  bursts  of 
laughter  which  are  held  by  purists  to  indicate  a  cer- 
tain want  of  good  breeding. 

"In  spite  of  Sir  William's  boisterous  manners," 
Mr.  Hooker  proceeded,  **he  impressed  me  as  a 
thinker  and  a  humanist.  Our  conversation  had  led 
us  on  to  the  aJBfairs  of  the  world  at  large.  Speaking 
of  the  'Great  Powers,'  as  they  are  called.  Sir  William 
insisted  that  all  of  them  betray  symptoms  which  ad- 
mit of  a  clear  pathological  definition.  The  malady 
indicated  is  an  acute  megalomania.  Each  of  them, 
he  said,  exhibits  the  symptoms  in  a  form  peculiar 
to  itself  j  while  the  lesser  units  contract  it  from  the 
greater  by  imitation,  or  unconscious  mimicry,  some 
of  the  worst  cases  arising  in  this  way.  Six  forms 
of  national  megalomania  can  be  identified  in  Europe, 
and  a  seventh  in  America,  all  derivatives  from  a  com- 
mon type,  but  developing  regional  or  endemic  varia- 
tions, according  to  race,  climate  or  other  conditions. 
The  diagnosis  is  best  established  by  a  study  of  the 
foreign  policies  of  the  Powers  affected,  the  signs  of 
mental  alienation  being  much  more  marked  on  this 
field  than  in  domestic  affairs.  The  difficulty,  how- 
ever, is  not  with  the  diagnosis,  which  is  simple,  but 
with  the  treatment.  The  nature  of  this  malady,  it 
appears,  is  to  reinforce  itself  by  association  and  con- 
tiguity among  the  patients.  It  is  therefore  essential 
to  keep  them  apart  from  one  another}  the  conse- 
quence of  bringing  them  together  being  that  they 

306 


AN  INTUITION  VERIFIED 

egg  one  another  on,  until  at  last  their  mania  breaks 
out  into  criminal  insanity — of  which  Sir  William 
gave  several  examples  from  the  recent  history  of 
Europe.  Unfortunately  no  means  can  be  found 
for  isolating  the  Powers,  great  or  small,  which  have 
contracted  the  disease,  tiie  tendency  of  the  times 
being  all  the  other  wayj  this  it  is  that  renders 
effective  treatment  extraordinarily  difficult.  The 
difficulty  reaches  its  height  in  the  imitative  outbreaks 
of  the  malady  among  the  smaller  units,  which  are 
sometimes  disguised  under  claims  for  self-determina- 
tion. Sir  William  wound  up  by  pointing  out  the  dis- 
tinction between  national  megalomania  and  patriot- 
ism. Megalomania  is  patriotism  in  the  state  of 
degeneration  and  incipient  decay,  or,  more  simply, 
patriotism  gone  mad.  He  thinks  that  the  degenera- 
tion of  the  one  thing  into  the  other  has  come  about 
through  the  enormous  growth  in  the  magnitude  of 
modern  States." 

"The  Chief  has  a  saying  to  the  same  effect,"  said 
Mr.  Hotblack:   "  *Power  drives  nations  mad.'  " 

"I  found  Sir  William  an  ardent  advocate  of  inter- 
national co-operationy"  Mr.  Hooker  went  on,  "but 
utterly  sceptical  as  to  international  government.  He 
regards  the  project  as  an  attempt  to  set  up  democracy 
in  a  madhouse." 

"As  a  compact  between  Powers  it  can  be  nothing 
else,"  said  Mr.  Hotblack,  "a  mere  arrangement  for 
pooling  the  toxin  which  maddens  them  all.  But  that 
is  not  the  only  conception  of  the  League  of  Nations. 
Mr.  Rumbelow  has  another.  A  world  which  cannot 
be  organized  on  the  basis  of  power  may  yet  be 
organized  in  other  ways.     But  proceed,  sir,  if  you 

307 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

please.  Sir  William's  opinions  on  this  matter  are  of 
profound  interest  to  a  psychologist." 

"He  regards  the  world  of  international  politics 
as  a  Bedlam,  in  which  the  sane  elements  dance  to 
the  tunes  played  by  the  megalomaniacs,"  said  Mr. 
Hooker.  "His  contempt  for  the  corporate  intelli- 
gence of  States  is  almost  boundless.  Of  course  he 
instanced  the  war  as  the  outstanding  proof.  But 
beyond  that  he  mentioned  a  long  list  of  ^symptoms,' 
as  he  called  them,  all  pointing  to  criminal  insanity 
in  States.  One  thing  struck  me  with  peculiar  force. 
In  the  course  of  his  attack  on  the  group-mind  he 
brought  up  the  question  of  prisons — institutions, 
Mr.  Hotblack,  which  I  have  long  held  in  the  utmost 
abhorrence.  He  declared  with  great  vehemence 
that  the  crimes  which  States  commit  against  their 
subjects  in  prisons  outweigh  all  the  crimes  for  which 
the  law-breakers  are  punished." 

"As  a  psychologist  I  support  him,"  interposed  Mr. 
Hotblack.  "I  should  not  be  surprised  to  learn,  sir, 
that  in  speaking  of  prisons  Sir  William  used  the 
word  *hell'  with  considerable  emphasis." 

"He  did,"  replied  Mr.  Hooker,  "but  I  have  not 
thought  it  necessary  to  quote  his  expletives." 

"In  this  instance,"  said  Mr.  Hotblack,  "the  word 
was  more  than  an  expletive.  Has  it  ever  occurred 
to  you,  sir,  that  our  prison-system  has  received  its 
ultimate  sanction  from  the  idea  of  an  eternal  prison, 
where  a  lawyer's  God  torments  the  souls  of  his 
rebellious  subjects  for  ever  and  ever?  I  should 
like  to  have  your  opinion  on  that  point." 

"I  have  not  the  least  doubt,"  replied  Mr. 
Hooker,  "that  hell  and  prison  are  connected  institu- 

308 


AN  INTUITION  VERIFIED 

tions.  Which  is  derived  from  which  is  difficult  to 
say.  I  take  them  as  variant  expressions  of  the  same 
idea — twin  diabolisms,  one  might  call  them.  But 
you  have  just  used  a  phrase,  Mr.  Hotblack,  which 
arrests  me.  You  spoke  of  a  'lawyer's  God.'  What 
exactly  do  you  mean  by  that?" 

"I  mean,"  said  the  psychologist,  "the  Deity  whose 
attributes  are  suggested  in  'God  save  the  King,'  which 
accurately  represents  the  popular  conception  of  the 
Divine  Nature,  as  it  exists  not  in  this  country  alone 
but  in  all  countries  which  have  contracted  the 
megalomania  referred  to  by  Sir  William  Timber- 
tree.  This  conception  of  God  had  its  origin  in  mili- 
tary necessities,  and  was  subsequently  elaborated  by 
pact-making  conquistadors,  to  consolidate  their  con- 
quests and  to  prepare  for  new  ones — a  soldier's  child 
and  a  lawyer's  nurseling.  In  the  broad  outlines  of  its 
structure  the  whole  theology  of  the  West  reveals 
the  lawyer's  mind,  Hebraic  or  Roman  as  the  case 
may  be,  completing  the  work  of  the  military  con- 
queror. The  religious  mind  has  had  far  less  to  do 
with  these  things  than  is  commonly  supposed.  In- 
stead of  originating  its  own  theology,  the  religious 
mind  has  had  to  adapt  itself  as  best  it  could,  and 
always  at  a  great  loss,  to  forms  of  thought  laid  down 
for  it  by  the  lawyers  of  conquering  states.  Had 
Western  civilization  devoted  its  energies  to  Beauty 
and  Joy,  instead  of  to  Power  and  Wealth,  not  one 
of  the  creeds  would  be  in  existence  j  men  would  have 
thought  more  nobly  of  God  and  of  the  universe, 
and  would  have  dealt  more  kindly  one  with  another. 
I  may  remind  you,  sir,  that  Moses,  from  whom 
Western  theology  takes  its  rise,  was  a  lawyer  and  a 

309 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

conqueror.  Beauty  and  Joy  were  not  on  his  pro- 
gramme. His  daring  raid  into  Palestine,  and  the 
appalling  atrocities  perpetrated  by  his  lieutenant  on 
the  inhabitants  of  the  Promised  Land,  have  furnished 
a  model  which  men  of  blood  and  iron  have  never 
been  slow  to  imitate  j  while  the  Being  who  directed 
these  butcheries,  and  sometimes  finished  them  off 
with  his  own  hands,  remains  to  this  day  identified  in 
the  popular  imagination  with  the  Creator  and  Law- 
giver of  the  universe.  In  spite  of  the  Greek  infu- 
sion, which  has  been  considerable,  religion,  ethics, 
law  and  international  polity  are  still  dominated  by 
ideas  appropriate  to  the  conquest  of  the  Canaanites. 
What  wonder,  sir,  that  'man's  inhumanity  to  man 
makes  countless  millions  mourn?'  What  hope  for 
goodwill  among  men  so  long  as  these  stupid  and 
wicked  survivals  are  integral  parts  of  the  popular 
religion  ? " 

"Sir  William  said  much  the  same  thing,"  replied 
Mr.  Hooker,  "though,  of  course,  he  phrased  it  dif- 
ferently. In  touching  upon  my  own  problem  he 
urged  me,  above  all  things,  *to  beware  of  the 
lawyers,'  using  language  which  vividly  recalled  to  my 
mind  some  passages  of  the  New  Testament  I  have 
recently  been  studying.  In  spite  of  the  abominable 
adjective  which  he  invariably  placed  before  his  noun, 
I  could  not  help  perceiving  that  Sir  William's  atti- 
tude towards  legalism  was  essentially  the  same  with 
that  of  my  Quaker  ancestors.  The  Quakers  have 
never  submitted  to  the  censorship  of  the  legal 
mind." 

"Nor  will  Mr.  Rumbelow,"  added  Mr.  Hot- 
black.    "The  Chief,  sir,  is  no  enemy  of  the  law,  but 

310 


AN  INTUITION  VERIFIED 

he  is  determined  to  keep  the  legalists  in  their  proper 
place." 

"I  gathered  so  much  from  our  last  interview," 
said  the  millionaire. 

"Our  last  interview,"  said  Mr.  Hotblack,  "has 
produced  interesting  results  in  several  directions. 
You  have  told  me  of  one.  Permit  me  to  tell  you  of 
another.  In  consequence  of  a  trifling  mistake  on  the 
part  of  the  listeners  who  tried  to  overhear  our  con- 
versation at  the  Club,  the  news  was  spread  about 
Smokeover  that  you  were  backing  Joy  Lady,  a 
runner  in  the  Grand  National,  for  twenty  thousand 
pounds.  Before  nightfall  all  the  betting  men  in  the 
Club,  and  hundreds  of  others,  were  backing  the  horse 
of  that  name  for  all  they  were  worth,  and  some  for 
more  than  they  were  worth.  She  lost  the  race,  which 
nobody  in  his  senses  expected  her  to  win.  You  may 
imagine  the  rest.  The  only  consolation  Smokeover 
has  is  that  you,  sir,  have  lost  twenty  thousand  pounds 
to  Rumbelow,  Stallybrass  &  Corker — that,  in  short, 
we  have  thoroughly  taken  you  in." 

"It  is  the  first  time,"  said  Mr.  Hooker  with  a 
smile,  "that  I  have  known  the  work  of  a  great  poet 
lead  either  to  a  financial  disaster  or  to  a  scandal. 
Coleridge  can  hardly  have  foreseen  that  this  would 
result  from  his  fine  verses." 

"In  the  regions  psychology  has  to  study,"  replied 
the  other,  "my  wonder  never  ceases  at  the  extraordi- 
nary combinations  of  cause  and  effect  that  are 
brought  about  by  what  look  like  the  merest  acci- 
dents. The  tricks  that  are  played  upon  what  is 
called  ^the  fixed  system  of  natural  law'  by  the  reac- 
tions upon  it  of  the  human  mind  are,  indeed,  a  per- 

311 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

petual  marvel  to  me.  No  one  who  has  studied  them 
can  doubt  for  a  moment  that  a  sportsmanlike  prin- 
ciple is  at  work  in  the  very  constitution  of  things — 
a  principle,  sir,  not  incapable  of  playing  a  practical 
joke  on  those  who  deserve  it.  Nature — and  nature 
in  the  proper  sense  must  always  include  the  reactions 
of  the  human  mind — abhors  mechanism.  In  the 
last  resort,  I  am  convinced,  we  are  dealing  with  a 
consummate  artist,  or,  which  is  the  same  thing,  with 
a  sportsman.  There  is  a  subtle  and  hidden  beauty, 
sir,  in  these  strange  concatenations.  For  my  own 
part  I  have  little  doubt  that  the  trifling  incident  we 
are  now  discussing  is  nothing  else  than  an  interlude 
of  comedy,  introduced  by  a  master  hand  into  the 
drama  of  events.  Or  shall  we  say  a  scherzo,  or  a 
weird  and  lovely  dance,  breaking  and  yet  maintain- 
ing the  movement  of  a  majestic  symphony?  In  con- 
templating these  wonderful  combinations,  Mr. 
Hooker,  I  am  often  reminded  of  the  way  an  affluent 
musician  plays  with  his  theme,  evoking  an  endless 
chain  of  astonishing  variations  from  half  a  dozen 
notes." 

Here  Mr.  Hotblack  paused,  and,  with  an  accuracy 
of  tone  which  showed  that  he  was  no  mean  musician, 
hummed  and  boomed  the  variations  of  Beethoven's 
Sonata  in  A  flat,  indicating  the  time  by  a  gentle  move-" 
ment  of  his  uplifted  hand. 

Then,  quite  suddenly,  but  without  any  violence 
of  transition,  his  humming  ran  on  into  articu- 
late speech,  as  though  the  theme  of  the  sonata 
and  the  remarks  that  followed  were  all  of  one 
piece: 

"Indeed,  I  have  become  convinced  that  the  whole 

312 


AN  INTUITION  VERIFIED 

entanglement — the  seeming  entanglement — in  which 
you  are  now  involved,  those  problems  of  yours  which 
are  moving  to  their  solution  in  time  with  the  march 
of  events,  the  strange  experiences  through  which 
you  have  recently  passed,  and  the  surprising  varia- 
tions of  outlook  to  which  they  have  led — I  am  con- 
vinced, sir,  that  all  this,  regarded  synoptically,  has  a 
musical  structure.  You  may  wonder  what  has  led 
me  to  this  conclusion.  I  will  tell  you.  Acting  under 
Mr.  Rumbelow's  orders  I  have  given  a  close  pro- 
fessional study  to  your  adventures — if  I  may  so  call 
them — both  as  a  whole  and  in  detail,  and  have  dis- 
covered at  many  points  unmistakable  signs  of  orches- 
tration. Mark  my  words,  Mr.  Hooker  j  the  end  of 
all  this  will  be  music!  I  do  not  anticipate  that  you 
will  achieve  the  regeneration  of  humanity  by  any 
panacea,  or  set  scheme  designed  for  the  purpose, 
which,  after  all,  would  only  provide  a  new  field 
of  operation  for  the  very  evils  it  sought  to  cure. 
But  I  do  anticipate  a  work  of  art,  a  deed  that  can- 
not be  repeated,  a  thing  of  beauty  and  a  joy  for 
ever." 

"Mr.  Hotblack,"  said  the  millionaire,  who  had 
followed  this  flight  of  fancy  with  evident  pleasure, 
"I  am  beginning  to  suspect  that  in  substance  your 
philosophy  is  my  own.  Quite  lately  I,  too,  have 
been  led  to  think  that  Beauty  plays  a  larger  part  in 
determining  the  actual  course  of  the  world  than  most 
of  our  thinkers  are  aware  of — though  I  must  make 
an  exception  of  Professor  Ripplemark.  At  all  events 
you  have  introduced  incidentally  one  of  the  chief 
topics  on  which  I  desire  to  consult  you.  You  have 
reminded  me  of  problems  still  remaining  on  my 

313 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

hands.  Well,  sir,  I  am  fully  resolved  that  the 
disposition  of  the  wealth  for  which  I  am  respon- 
sible shall  not  be  left  to  the  mercy  of  mechanical 
methods." 

"There  is  no  harm  in  mechanical  methods,"  in- 
terposed Mr.  Hotblack,  "provided  the  application 
of  them  is  entrusted  to  sportsmanlike  hands.  In- 
deed, sir,  they  are  essential." 

"I  am  beginning  to  understand  your  dialect,"  said 
Mr.  Hooker.  "It  is  an  interesting  experiment  in 
the  use  of  language — a  field  in  which  experiment  is 
much  to  be  commended.  In  the  meantime  will  you 
be  good  enough  to  tell  me  whether  you  are  familiar 
— whether  the  Firm  is  familiar — with  the  phrase  *a 
copartnership  of  reciprocally  interacting  personali- 
ties'?" 

"We  are  thoroughly  familiar  with  it,"  said  Mr. 
Hotblack,  "though  of  course  it  is  not  the  kind  of 
language  we  employ  in  the  conduct  of  business.  The 
phrase  was  coined  by  Professor  Ripplemark.  It 
occurs  in  The  Moral  Will,  a  remarkable  work,  of 
which  Mr.  Rumbelow  has  distributed  a  hundred 
copies  among  the  leading  members  of  the  Firm.  The 
whole  book,  sir,  supports  the  combination  we  have 
been  discussing — the  creativeness  of  the  sportsman- 
like principle  wedded  to  the  efficiency  of  the  mechani- 
cal method." 

"In  which  combination,"  said  Mr.  Hooker,  "every- 
thing turns  on  the  individual  characters  of  the  in- 
teracting personalities." 

"Call  them  sportsmen,"  interrupted  Mr.  Hot- 
black. 

"The  name  is  of  no  consequence." 

314 


AN  INTUITION  VERIFIED 

"Pardon  me,  sir,  the  name  is  of  great  consequence. 
But  please  to  go  on." 

"Well,  then,  the  position  is  this.  The  wealth  at 
my  disposition  is  far  too  great  to  be  administered 
by  any  single  individual.  On  those  terms  the  prob- 
lem is  frankly  insoluble.  Everything  points  to  a 
division  of  responsibility.  This  mass  of  wealth  must 
be  broken  up,  not  into  a  heap  of  unrelated  frag- 
ments by  giving  it  to  this  and  that — the  usual  prac- 
tice— but  by  putting  it  under  diversity  of  adminis- 
tration. A  community  of  wills  must  be  constituted, 
each  of  which  shall  so  affirm  itself  as  to  help  forward 
the  self-affirmation  of  the  others,  working  for  ends 
that  are  different,  but  yet  related  in  the  unity  of  the 
spirit." 

"And  in  the  bond  of  peace,"  added  Mr.  Hot- 
black.  "I  understand  you  perfectly,  sir,  though,  if 
you  will  again  pardon  me,  the  Firm  would  render 
your  meaning  with  less  circumlocution.  In  plain 
speech,  the  members  of  your  community  must  be 
persons  who  love  one  another." 

"You  anticipate  my  thought,"  continued  the  mil- 
lionaire. "Mr.  Hotblack,  I  need  hardly  explain  to 
you,  as  a  psychologist,  that  in  my  present  position  I 
am  an  epitome  of  civilization,  the  summary  of  a 
world  which  has  suddenly  grown  rich  and  has  yet 
to  learn  what  riches  are  for.  Moreover,  I  am  not 
the  rightful  owner  of  what  I  possess.  It  is  full  of 
evil  possibilities  I  cannot  control.  Any  lawyer,  any 
parson,  any  economist,  any  vulgar  plutocrat,  any 
tub-thumping  agitator  at  a  street  corner,  could  tell 
me  what  to  do  with  it.  But  their  ways  of  disposing 
of  wealth  are  the  mere  makeshifts  of  the  universal 

315 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

Ignorance.  Nor  can  I  restore  it  to  those  to  whom  It 
originally  belonged,  for  the  simple  reason  that  they 
are  not  to  be  found.  Smokeover  has  no  more  right 
to  it  than  I  have.  If  I  give  it  to  the  State  I  give  it 
to  the  chief  waster  of  the  common  substance  j  the 
State  will  only  have  so  much  more  at  its  disposal 
when  it  makes  the  next  war.  If  I  give  it  to  beggars 
I  merely  support  and  countenance  the  evil  conditions 
of  which  my  present  position  is  the  outcome.  If  I 
give  it  to  the  Ethical  Society,  morality,  like  religion, 
will  become  professional,  institutional,  an  affair  of 
vested  interests  and  appointments,  and  so  lose  the 
little  influence  it  might  otherwise  have.  If  I  endow 
my  own  opinions,  they  will  degenerate  in  the 
hands  of  the  men  I  have  bribed  to  teach  them. 
At  all  points  I  am  confronted  with  an  unman- 
ageable task.  Human  nature  was  not  meant  for 
wealth  on  this  scale  j  it  is  a  power  far  too  great 
to  be  lodged  in  the  hands  of  any  man,  even  the 
wisest." 

"I  am  glad  to  hear,"  interposed  Mr.  Hotblack, 
"that  you  have  no  intention  of  handing  your  fortune 
over  to  the  State.  There  has  been  a  rumour  in 
Smokeover  to  that  effect." 

"The  State,"  replied  Mr.  Hooker,  "is  in  a  posi- 
tion analogous  to  my  own,  handling  wealth  on  a 
scale  which  it  lacks  intelligence  to  cope  with,  and 
setting  its  subjects  a  most  pernicious  example  in  the 
spending  of  it — the  very  type  of  a  dangerous  multi- 
millionaire. Sir  William  Timbertree  referred  to 
this  as  a  crowning  instance  of  the  ignorance  of  the 
group  mind.  It  astounds  me,  Mr.  Hotblack,  to  hear 
the  agitators  demanding  that  I  should  surrender  my 

316 


AN  INTUITION  VERIFIED 

fortune  to  the  State.     But  how  are  the  eyes  of  the 
public  to  be  opened?" 

"Education,  sir!  education!"  said  Mr.  Hotblack, 
taking  time  to  consider  his  answer  and  pronouncing 
the  words  with  great  emphasis.  "But  we  have  a 
long  furrow  to  plough." 

"I  observe,"  replied  Mr.  Hooker,  "that  you 
said  'we.'  Has  the  Firm  any  interest  in  educa- 
tion?" 

"It  has  become  the  ruling  passion  of  Mr.  Rum- 
below's  life,  as  it  has  always  been  that  of  My  Lady's. 
He  regards  the  present  movement  for  education  as 
the  most  fascinating  and  promising  gamble  on  which 
the  human  race  has  ever  embarked." 

"We  have  come  to  my  second  point  sooner  than 
I  expected,"  said  Mr.  Hooker,  referring  to  a  note- 
book. "Mr.  Hotblack,  I  have  long  been  meditating 
on  these  lines.  But  this  morning  an  incident  occurred 
in  this  household — it  was  connected  with  the  man 
who  has  been  waiting  on  us  at  table — which  brought 
my  thoughts  to  a  sudden  focus.  My  mind  is  now. 
irrevocably  made  up.  I  shall  devote  my  fortune, 
for  the  time  it  remains  at  my  disposal,  to  the  cause 
of  education." 

"Good!"  cried  Mr.  Hotblack. 

"But  I  shall  do  it  in  my  own  way." 

"Good  again!" 

"I  shall  work  through  a  copartnership  of  recipro- 
cally interacting  personalities." 

"Better  than  ever." 

"My  plan  is  to  form  a  community  of  three." 

"A  well-chosen  number,  sir!  When  communities 
are  composed  of  more  than  three  persons,  or  five  at 

317 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

most,  the  psychological  conditions  are  apt  to  de- 
teriorate. Three  is  an  awkward  number  in  affairs 
of  the  heart  but  the  best  for  effective  co-operation. 
Yes,  the  best  number  for  a  company  of  gentleman 
adventurers.  But  see  to  it,  sir,  that  all  three  are 
sportsmen  at  heart!  Everything  else  turns  upon 
that." 

"We  have  reached  the  critical  question,"  said  Mr. 
Hooker,  drawing  his  chair  close  to  the  psychologist. 
**We  mentioned  just  now  the  name  of  Professor 
Ripplemark.  Mr.  Rumbelow  knows  him?  Speak 
low,  sir." 

"Mr.  Rumbelow  is  in  touch  with  all  that  is  most 
adventurous  in  the  mind  of  the  age.  He  knows 
Professor  Ripplemark  well." 

"Ha!"  said  Mr.  Hooker j  then  with  a  glance 
round  the  room,  "I  am  not  altogether  easy  in  my 
mind,  Mr.  Hotblack.  There  may  be  listeners  about. 
Come  further  from  the  door;  we  are  too  near  the 
keyhole.  The  names  I  am  about  to  mention  must 
not  be  overheard,  nor  supposed  to  be  the  names  of 
horses.  A  profound  secrecy  is  essential.  This  is 
no  time  for  the  Invisible  Powers  to  amuse  them- 
selves." 

The  two  now  shifted  their  position,  drew  up  their 
chairs  in  close  proximity  to  one  another  at  either 
side  of  a  small  round  table,  and  with  bent  brows  and 
eager  faces  attacked  the  crisis  of  their  discussion; 
but  in  tones  so  subdued  that  the  Immortals  who 
report  these  dialogues  could  hear  no  more  than  the 
stray  ejaculations,  or  rather  explosions,  in  which 
the  pent-up  enthusiasm  of  Mr.  Hotblack  found 
relief. 

318 


AN  INTUITION  VERIFIED 

It  was  abundantly  evident  that  Mr.  Hooker's 
plans  had  the  warm  approval  of  the  psychologist. 
Towards  the  end  he  had  some  difficulty  in  restrain- 
ing himself.  Finally,  when  a  gesture  from  Mr. 
Hooker  indicated  that  the  matter  was  concluded,  he 
sprang  from  his  seat,  grasped  the  millionaire  by  the 
hand  and  threw  caution  to  the  winds. 

"Let  me  congratulate  you  again,  sir,"  he  cried} 
"let  me  congratulate  you  in  the  name  of  the  Firm  on 
the  most  brilliant  conception  that  ever  originated  in 
the  mind  of  a  millionaire!  A  stroke  of  genius,  sir! 
A  work  of  art  in  the  true  sense  of  the  term!  I 
would  not  have  believed  that  any  mind  save  one  was 
capable  of  creating  such  a  masterpiece — so  daring  in 
motive,  so  farseeing  in  aim,  so  harmonious  in  design. 
Worthy  of  the  Chief  himself,  sir,  and  what  more  can 
I  say?  You  have  caught  the  very  spirit  of  the  Firm! 
You  are  establishing  a  new  point  of  contact  with  the 
invisible  world!  Your  action  will  reverberate 
through  the  ages!  Your  name  will  be  linked  with 
the  Chief's!" 

Mr.  Hotblack  said  more  in  the  same  strair^,  until 
at  last,  with  a  scarcely  perceptible  transition  and  as 
though  he  could  find  no  other  mode  of  expressing 
himself,  he  wound  up  his  rhapsody  by  reciting,  once 
more,  the  lines  which  had  brought  disaster  to  the 
racing  fraternity  of  Smokeover. 

Mr.  Hotblack's  enthusiasm  had  ended  on  a  note 
so  high  that  for  some  minutes  Mr.  Hooker,  who  was 
deeply  moved,  found  it  impossible  to  resume  the 
conversation.  He  had  no  alternative  but  to  wait 
until  he  had  himself  under  control,  and  until  Mr. 
Hotblack,  who  had  been  pacing  the  room  during  his 

319 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

recitation  like  a  man  possessed,  had  subsided  into  a 
chair.    At  last  he  ventured  to  say: 

"I  can  tell  you  an  interesting  fact  regarding  the 
poem  you  have  just  recited.  I  learnt  it  from  Sir 
William  Timbertree.  The  poem  was  a  favourite 
with  his  mother.  She  repeated  it  constantly  on  her 
deathbed,  and  died  with  the  last  lines  on  her  lips." 

"I  am  aware  of  it,"  replied  Mr.  Hotblack.  "A 
fact  of  profound  psychological  significance,  and  one, 
I  assure  you,  that  has  not  been  overlooked  by  the 
Department  of  the  Firm  over  which  I  have  the 
honour  to  preside.  Mr.  Hooker,  I  have  no  right  to 
obtrude  my  own  afFairs  on  your  notice,  but  I  can 
hardly  refrain  at  the  moment  from  divulging  a 
domestic  detail.  I  have  left  instructions  sir,  with 
Mrs.  Hotblack,  who  will  probably  survive  me,  that 
those  lines  are  to  be  inscribed  on  my  tomb.  They 
will  strike  a  new  note  in  Smokeover  Cemetery." 

Here  Mr.  Hotblack,  who  was  trembling  with  ex- 
citement, frankly  broke  down.  Then,  with  an  effort, 
and  as  though  excusing  himself,  he  went  on: 

"You  must  understand,  sir,  that  the  service  on 
which  I  am  engaged  is  hardly  compatible  with  a 
long  life.  Psychology,  to  a  man  who  takes  it  in 
earnest,  is  an  exhausting  vocation — the  most  im- 
portant but  the  most  neglected  of  all  the  sciences, 
despised  and  rejected  by  the  powers  that  pretend  to 
rule  the  world.  Yes,  sir,  it  is  an  uphill  fight.  But 
no  matter!  I  serve  a  great  master,  and  am  willing 
that  nothing  should  be  remembered  of  me  save  the 
spirit  in  which  I  served  him.  It  has  been  the  spirit 
of  joy,  sir — the  spirit  in  which  I  have  faced  the  odds 
of  this  world,  and  hope,  with  Sir  William  Timber- 

320 


AN  INTUITION  VERIFIED 

tree's  mother,  to  face  the  odds  of  the  next.  Those 
lines  express  it." 

At  this  unexpected  self-revelation  Mr.  Hooker 
was  visibly  affected,  and  he,  too,  had  some  emotion 
to  suppress. 

"I  perceive,  Mr.  Hotblack,"  he  said,  "that  you 
are  guided  by  a  star." 

"I  am,  sir  J  and  it  shines  on  My  Lady's  forehead." 

"I  have  seen  it,"  said  the  millionaire  in  a  solemn 
voice. 

There  was  another  pause,  broken  at  last  by  Mr. 
Hooker. 

"I  have  to  thank  you,"  he  said,  "for  giving  me  to- 
night the  information  that  makes  me  sure  of  my 
ground." 

At  these  words  Mr.  Hotblack's  countenance  re- 
sumed its  businesslike  expression. 

"One  thing  only  remains,"  he  replied.  "The 
Firm  must  immediately  compute  the  odds  on  the 
success  of  what  you  propose  to  undertake.  The 
necessary  data  are  all  in  my  office  and  they  shall  be 
passed  on  to  the  relevant  Departments  to-morrow. 
But  I  must  warn  you,  Mr.  Hooker" — and  here  his 
tone  became  exceedingly  grave — ^Hhat  the  odds  may 
turn  out  against  you." 

"That  will  not  affect  my  resolution  in  the  smallest 
degree." 

"Nor  the  value  of  what  you  propose." 

"Nor  the  value  of  what  I  propose,"  repeated  Mr. 
Hooker.  Then,  changing  his  tone:  "And  now,  Mr. 
Hotblack,  our  business  being  at  an  end  I  suggest 
that  you  and  I  drink  a  glass  of  wine  together." 

A  moment  later  the  psychologist  and  the  million- 

321 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

aire  were  pledging  each  other  in  a  draught  of  in- 
comparable madeira. 

As  they  deposited  their  empty  glasses  the  distant 
clock  of  Smokeover  Cathedral  struck  twelve. 

Next  morning  Mr.  Hooker  was  in  Oxford. 


i 


322 


CHAPTER  THREE 

Professor  Ripplemark  is  put  to  the  Question 

IT  has  been  said,  by  an  earlier  Voice,  that  Mr. 
Hooker's  interesting  problems  had  penetrated  to 
the  Common  Rooms  of  our  ancient  Universities, 
where  they  had  been  provocative  of  much  discus- 
sion, grave  and  gay.  The  Regius  Professor  of 
Virtue  was,  of  course,  well  abreast  of  the  controversy. 
He  had  propounded  several  methods  for  extricating 
Mr.  Hooker  from  his  difficulties,  which,  to  say  the 
least  of  them,  were  somewhat  unusual  in  the  cir- 
cumstances j  and  more  than  once  he  had  startled  the 
audience  in  the  Common  Room  by  asserting  that 
the  problem  was,  in  essence,  "a  sporting  proposition." 
To  which  his  argumentative  colleagues  had  im- 
mediately replied  by  challenging  him  to  define  his 
terms. 

Now  Professor  Maurice  Ripplemark  was  notori- 
ously careless  in  the  definition  of  terms,  a  failing 
which  nearly  caused  the  Regius  Professorship  to  go 
to  his  opponent,  a  gentleman  seventy-three  years  of 
age,  famous  the  world  over  as  a  master  of  Defini- 
tion. 

And  this  indeed  would  have  happened  had  not 
one  of  Ripplemark's  supporters,  a  fervent  disciple  of 
Aristotle,  put  in  a  powerful  plea,  enforced  by  quota- 
tions from  the  original  Greek,  in  which  he  argued 
that  Valour  was  an  essential  qualification  in  a  Pro- 

323 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

fessor  of  Virtue^  and  that  no  moralist  was  fitted  to 
hold  such  a  position,  least  of  all  among  the  young 
men  (and  the  young  women)  of  Oxford,  unless  he 
had  shown  evidence  of  a  strong  nerve,  a  stout  heart, 
a  clear  head,  an  iron  will  and  a  complete  disregard 
for  his  personal  safety — as  Ripplemark  had,  and  as 
the  septuagenarian  had  not.  This  argument,  which 
profoundly  impressed  the  august  powers  responsible 
for  the  appointment,  carried  the  day. 

But  Ripplemark  had  not  been  long  in  office  before 
he  began  to  give  evidence  of  his  failing.  When  the 
Hooker  question  came  up,  the  language  he  flung 
about  the  University  was  so  loose  and  vague  as 
almost  to  constitute  an  academic  scandal.  Again 
and  again  the  attempt  was  made  to  force  from  him 
a  precise  statement  of  what  he  meant  by  "a  sport- 
ing proposition."  This  he  obstinately  refused  to 
give,  asserting  that  the  phrase  represented  an  ul- 
timate and  self-evident  category  of  thought,  which 
might  explain  other  things  but  could  not  itself  be 
explained.  And  he  would  always  end  by  express- 
ing some  surprise  that  the  University  of  Oxford,  of 
all  institutions  in  the  world,  could  have  any  doubts 
as  to  the  meaning  of  the  phrase — a  remark  which 
gave  some  offence. 

It  was  clearly  needful  to  bring  the  Professor  to 
book  on  this  matter.  So  the  University  Contention 
Club,  whose  rule  it  was  to  discuss  a  practical  prob- 
lem once  in  seven  years,  invited  him  to  read  a  paper 
on  the  subject  in  a  lecture  room  of  one  of  the  Col- 
leges, under  the  title:  "What  ought  Mr.  Hooker 
to  do  with  his  millions?" 

Ripplemark  recognized  the  sportsmanlike  char- 

324 


THE  PROFESSOR  QUESTIONED 

acter  of  the  invitation  and  responded  in  kind  by 
immediate  consent.  Whereupon  the  wits  of  the 
Club,  of  whom  there  were  several,  began  sharpen- 
ing their  swords  and  preparing  their  impromptus  j 
and  there  was  every  prospect  of  a  very  lively  debate. 

And  so,  at  the  very  moment  when  Mr.  Hooker 
was  in  the  act  of  ordering  his  thumb-marked  copy 
of  The  Moral  Will  to  be  soaked  in  petrol  and  burned 
with  fire,  the  author  of  the  book  was  engaged  in 
composing  a  discourse  upon  Mr.  Hooker,  and  he  was 
still  so  engaged  when  the  millionaire's  telegram 
arrived  proposing  an  interview.  With  this  also 
Ripplemark  closed  at  once.  He  was  naturally 
startled  by  the  coincidence.  But  his  experience  in 
the  war  had  taught  him  not  to  be  greatly  surprised 
at  anything.  However,  a  surprise  was  in  store  for 
him. 

Mr.  Hooker,  who  had  recently  been  learning  to 
be  interested  in  persons  as  well  as  in  principles,  spent 
some  time  on  the  journey  to  Oxford  in  trying  to 
form  a  mental  image  of  the  kind  of  man  Ripple- 
mark might  be.  So  far  he  had  nothing  to  go  upon 
except  The  Moral  Will  and  the  particulars  in  Who^s 
Who.  Neither  was  sufficient  for  clear  vision.  There 
were  several  chapters  in  The  Moral  Will  which 
were  not  incompatible  with  a  seasoned  maturity  j 
but  there  were  others  that  betrayed  the  love  of 
danger  that  goes  with  the  inexperience  of  youth. 
So  Mr.  Hooker's  visualizations  were  confused.  Now 
he  would  see  before  him  a  very  lively  young  gentle- 
man j  now  a  prematurely  old  one;  the  first  would 
vanish  on  his  remembering  that  Ripplemark  was 
Regius  Professor  of  Virtue;  the  second  on  his  re- 

325 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

membering  that  he  was  a  "V.C."    There  was  noth- 
ing for  it  but  to  wait  for  objective  evidence. 

Professor  Ripplemark  received  the  millionaire  in 
his  college  rooms.  The  man  whom  Hooker  saw 
before  him  might  be  thirty-five  years  of  age.  He 
was  erect  without  being  stifF,  his  head  finely  poised 
on  a  muscular  neck.  He  wore  an  air  of  cheerful 
vitality  which — as  a  cynic  once  said  of  him — would 
have  been  more  befitting  in  a  Professor  of  Vice. 
Intense  activity  was  bespoken  at  every  point  of  his 
lithe  figure  J  thought  sat  upon  a  clear  browj  the  eye 
was  large  and  liquid  as  a  poet's.  At  a  glance  you 
saw  the  high  temper  of  the  man,  and  thought,  per- 
haps, of  a  glittering  blade  wrought  of  the  finest 
Damascus  steel.  You  saw  also  that  Ripplemark  was 
wise  j  but  wise  rather  after  the  manner  of  the  serpent, 
with  its  fatal  spring,  than  of  the  owl  with  its  dismal 
profundity  and  melancholy  flight.  That  a  man  so 
debonnaire  and  radiant,  so  formidable  and  yet  so 
attractive,  should  profess  Virtue  by  a  King's  com- 
mand, would  have  seemed  natural  to  a  Greek  of  the 
time  of  Alcibiades,  or  perhaps  to  an  Englishman  in 
the  merry  days  of  Charles  II;  but  to  the  men  of  this 
generation,  born  under  the  grey,  it  was  something  of 
a  portent  and  an  astonishment.  Can  you  wonder, 
then,  that  Mr.  Hooker,  in  spite  of  his  firm  faith  in 
a  connexion  between  Virtue  and  Happiness,  gave  a 
slight  start  of  surprise  at  his  first  vision  of  the  Regius 
Professor? 

"You  are  Professor  Ripplemark  —  Professor 
Maurice  Ripplemark?"  he  asked,  the  thought  sud- 
denly occurring  that  possibly  there  might  be  two 
of  them. 

V  326 


THE  PROFESSOR  QUESTIONED 

The  Professor  smiled.  "I  see,  sir,"  he  said,  "you 
expected  Virtue  to  have  a  more  venerable  representa- 
tive. But  the  Universities  have  changed  greatly  since 
the  war.  The  ring  of  octogenarians  is  being  broken 
up,  and  there  is  less  intolerance  towards  young  men. 
Virtue,  also,  is  less  dismal  that  it  was,  and  there  is  a 
dare-devil  element  even  in  education." 

"I  congratulate  you,"  said  Mr.  Hooker,  "on  your 
appointment,  which  I  hear  was  vigorously  contested. 
I  congratulate  the  University.  I  congratulate  the 
nation.  And  I  congratulate  the  King.  You  have 
made  a  fine  beginning.  Professor.  And  you  have 
begun  at  the  right  end — the  Moral  Will.  The  es- 
sential thing  in  philosophy — is  it  not? — is  to  get  the 
right  opening,  to  know  where  to  begin.  I  hope  you 
are  going  to  follow  it  up." 

Ripplemark  said  to  himself:  "So  he  is  not  going 
to  be  a  bore  after  all."    Then  aloud: 

"I  wrote  that  book,  Mr.  Hooker,  before  the  war 
— save  for  one  chapter.  But  I  have  learnt  much 
since  then.  And,  as  you  say,  I  must  follow  it  up. 
But  I  perceive  you  are  a  student  of  philosophy." 

"Yes,"  answered  Hooker,  "I  am  what  some  people 
call  a  tainted  philosopher.  A  philosopher  tainted 
with  business,  and  now  still  more  deeply  tainted  with 
money.  There  are  those  who  think  I  know  nothing 
about  business;  you  will  probably  think  that  I  know 
less  about  philosophy.  Meanwhile  the  world  calls 
me  a  profiteer.    Not  an  easy  position." 

"An  interesting  combination,"  said  Ripplemark. 
"And  one  with  great  possibilities." 

"I  am  glad  you  see  that,"  said  Hooker,  speaking 
with    great    eagerness.      "You    interpret    my    own 

327 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

thought.  By  the  way — forgive  me  for  asking — do 
you  know  anything  about  business?" 

"Hardly  in  your  sense.  Of  course  I  have  read 
Political  Economy.  But  I  have  no  experience  in 
the  handling  of  money  on  a  large  scale,  which  is  a 
defect  in  a  Professor  of  Virtue.  The  moral  prob- 
lems of  our  time,  sir,  turn  on  the  handling  of  money 
more  than  on  anything  else.  Say  what  they  will, 
money  is  the  raw  material,  so  to  speak,  with  which 
the  Moral  Will  has  to  deal.  But  in  business  you 
have  the  advantage  of  me." 

"Let  us  look  into  that,"  said  Hooker.  "Natur- 
ally you  have  had  no  business  training  in  the  ordinary 
sense.  But  you  have  served  in  the  war.  You  know 
the  importance  of  organization,  discipline,  exacti- 
tude, scientific  method." 

Ripplemark  wondered  what  he  was  driving  at.  He 
was  silent  for  a  few  moments,  reflecting  that  he 
would  test  the  millionaire  with  generalities  and  make 
sure  of  his  ground  before  getting  further  involved. 

"Oh  yes,"  he  said,  "of  course  I  was  in  the  war — 
did  my  bit  like  the  rest  of  us.  And  I  learnt  a  good 
many  things  that  will  prove  useful  in  my  profession. 
For  example " 

"In  what  branch  of  the  Service  were  you?"  in- 
terrupted Hooker. 

"I  was  in  the  infantry  to  begin  with,  and  then 
transferred  to  the  Flying  Corps." 

"Ha!"  cried  the  other,  going  ofF  at  a  tangent.  "I 
had  a  son  in  the  Flying  Corps.  He  was  killed." 
And  he  began  to  give  particulars.  Did  Professor 
Ripplemark  happen  to  have  met  his  son?     No. 

"Naturally,"  Hooker  went  on,  "I  feel  an  interest 

328 


THE  PROFESSOR  QUESTIONED 

in  all  flying  men.  I  hope  you  won't  mind  my  say- 
ing that  it  forms  a  link  between  you  and  me." 

"You  are  extremely  kind  to  say  so.  The  link 
holds  reciprocally.  The  father  of  a  flying  man  who 
was  killed — well,  my  own  father  is  living,  and  I, 
too,  happen  to  be  alive." 

Here  there  was  a  slight  emotional  disturbance  on 
the  part  of  Mr.  Hooker,  which  brought  the  con- 
versation to  a  pause.  Ripplemark,  breaking  the 
silence  at  a  venture,  began  to  talk  disconnectedly. 

"Flying,  Mr.  Hooker,  is  no  bad  training  for  a 
philosopher.  It's  good  for  your  psychology,  helps 
you  to  see  things  in  perspective,  accustoms  you  to 
the  unexpected,  teaches  you  the  meaning  of  decision 
— and  a  lot  more  besides.  For  example:  your  valu- 
ation of  the  planet  is  quite  different  when  you  are 
15,000  feet  above  from  what  it  is  when  you  are  on 
the  surface.  It  might  almost  be  said  to  alter  your 
sense  of  relative  values.  A  man  should  fly,  sir,  be- 
fore he  graduates  in  philosophy.  Or  failing  that, 
let  him  study  astronomy.  Astronomy  achieves  the 
same  result  in  another  form — a  powerful  solvent 
of  limitations  and  a  terrible  corrector  of  human 
pride — *just  dreadful,'  as  Carlyle  said." 

"You  said  just  now,"  broke  in  Hooker,  "that  The 
Moral  Will  was  written  before  the  war.  Do  you 
still  stand  by  it?" 

"Yesj  but  only  as  an  introduction  to  the  subject. 
I  emphasized  that.  As  you  said,  the  book  needs  to 
be  followed  up." 

"It  is  the  following  up  that  I  am  Interested  in," 
replied  Mr.  Hooker,  "and  I  will  return  to  that  in  a 
moment.     In  the  meantime  I  would  ask  a  question. 

329 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

That  chapter  in  which  you  say  that  a  man's  will, 
though  not  p-ivatey  is  yet  all  his  own — your  ex- 
perience in  the  Flying  Corps  has  not  altered  that?" 

"On  the  contrary  J  that  is  precisely  what  flying 
has  confirmed.  If  a  man  wants  to  discover  whether 
or  no  he  has  a  will  of  his  own,  let  him  fly,  Mr. 
Hooker  J  let  him  fly  over  the  German  lines  with  a 
hostile  squadron  in  pursuit  of  him.  You  can  under- 
stand, sir,  that  you  are  then  in  a  position  where  you 
can't  consult  anybody:  neither  your  lawyer,  nor  your 
doctor,  nor  your  father  confessor,  nor  your  com- 
mander-in-chief. Of  course  you  may  consult  God. 
Some  do.  But  consulting  God  is  only  another  name 
for  reinforcing  your  own  independence.  You  act 
on  your  own  mitiative  and  take  your  risk.  And  there 
you  have  the  meaning  of  life  focussed  to  a  point. 
Life,  Mr.  Hooker,  consists  in  the  facing  of  risks. 
I  said  that  in  my  book." 

"That,"  replied  Hooker,  "is  a  view  of  life  which 
has  only  recently  appealed  to  me.  Perhaps  I  have 
something  important  yet  to  learn  about  it.  By  the 
way,  do  you  possess  an  aeroplane  at  the  present 
time?" 

"No  J  but  I  can  always  get  the  use  of  one." 

"Then  I  wish,"  said  Hooker  with  a  smile,  "that 
one  day  you  would  take  me  for  a  flight." 

Professor  Ripplemark  seemed  amused.  "I  won- 
der," he  thought,  "if  that  is  what  he  has  been  driv- 
ing at  all  the  time.     However,  I  will  put  him  off." 

"You  are  taking  more  risks  than  you  know,  Mr. 
Hooker,"  he  said.  "But  I  am  afraid  the  experiment 
would  not  be  satisfactory.  To  make  it  complete  you 
ought  to  take  me  for  a  flight,  not  I  you.    And  then 

330 


THE  PROFESSOR  QUESTIONED 

— over  the  German  lines,  and  with  a  hostile  squadron 
in  pursuit.     We  could  hardly  reproduce  that." 

"I  am  not  so  sure,"  said  the  millionaire.  "Before 
the  talk  is  over  you  may  find,  Professor,  that  I  am 
taking  you  for  a  flight,  a  pretty  dangerous  one,  tooj 
certainly  at  a  great  altitude  and  with  a  horde  of  little 
minds  in  pursuit  of  us.  But  you  must  understand 
that  I  am  a  lonely  man — isolated  from  others  by 
circumstances  which  you  can  imagine — and  such  men 
are  subject  to  strange  fancies.  But  leave  that  aside 
and  let  us  come  to  the  object  of  my  visit.  Do  you 
happen  by  any  chance  to  be  acquainted  with  my 
friend,  Mr.  Arthur  Rumbelow?" 

"I  know  him  well,"  said  Ripplemark,  "and  I 
honour  him  as  one  of  the  greatest  of  men.  We  were 
together  in  the  same  hospital  in  France,  and  I  count 
the  accident  that  threw  us  together  the  most  for- 
tunate event  of  my  life.  But  I  am  surprised,  sir, 
to  hear  you  call  him  your  friend." 

Paying  no  heed  to  the  last  words  Hooker  went 
on: 

"Were  you  with  him  in  the  hospital  ship  that  was 
torpedoed?" 

"I  was." 

"Were  you  an  eyewitness  of  the  saving  of  his 
life?" 

Ripplemark  sprang  to  his  feet. 

"Then  you  know  Margaret  Wolfstone!"  he  cried. 

"Calmly,"  said  Hooker  j  "tell  me  what  you  saw." 

"He  and  I  were  thrown  out  on  the  same  side  of 
the  ship  J  both  of  us  were  drowning;  I  called  to  her 
for  help;  she  saw  me  and  heard  me,  but  she  went 
after  him  and  left  me  to  my  chances." 

331 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

"And  the  inference?"  asked  Hooker,  in  a  fierce 

tone. 

"She  is  one  of  the  noblest  of  women!"  cried 

Ripplemark. 

Mr.   Hooker's  expression  softened  immediately. 

"And  you  know  what  has  happened  to  her?"  he 
asked. 

"A  work  of  hell!"  said  Ripplemark.  "Mr. 
Hooker,  if  you  have  any  sympathy  with  the  people 
who  attacked  her,  may  I  ask  you  to  end  this  inter- 
view at  once." 

"I  have  none,"  said  Hooker.  "Professor  Ripple- 
mark, there  is  here  an  extraordinary  convergence  of 
different  minds.  Your  own  and  mine  move  to  the 
same  point.  Your  book  revealed  it  and  your  words 
confirm  it.  Miss  Wolfstone  is  my  dearest  and  most 
trusted  friend.  Were  I  to  die  to-morrow  she  would 
be  my  heiress." 

"Good  God!" 

Ripplemark  stood  aghast,  and  Hooker  perceiving 
the  shock  his  words  had  produced,  wished  he  could 
recall  them.  For  a  few  moments  both  men  were  at 
a  loss  for  speech. 

"Mr.  Hooker,"  said  Ripplemark,  "you  have 
brought  me  evil  tidings — evil,  at  least,  to  this  ex- 
tent, that  they  place  me  in  a  very  difficult  position." 

A  light  began  to  dawn  upon  Hooker's  mind,  more 
perhaps  from  the  tone  of  Ripplemark's  voice  than 
from  the  words  themselves.  But  he  was  not  sure. 
He  resolved  to  test  the  ground. 

"You  mean,"  he  said,  "that  Margaret  Wolf- 
stone,  as  what  she  was,  is  one  person:  Margaret 
Wolfstone,  as  my  heiress,  another?" 

332 


THE  PROFESSOR  QUESTIONED 

*'I  mean  perclsely  that,"  said  Ripplemark. 

Mr.  Hooker  needed  no  further  assurance.  Doubt 
gone,  he  plunged  ahead. 

"You  have  said,  Professor  Ripplemark,  that  what 
I  last  told  you  places  you  in  a  difficult  position.  Will 
you  allow  me  to  be  the  means  of  your  extrication?" 

Here  Ripplemark,  for  some  reason  the  other  could 
not  divine,  broke  into  a  hearty  peal  of  laughter. 

"Pardon  me,  Mr.  Hooker,"  he  said,  "the  situa- 
tion is  most  extraordinary.  At  the  moment  of  your 
entering  this  room  I  was  engaged  in  an  attempt  to 
extricate  you  from  a  difficulty.  And  now  you  are 
proposing  to  extricate  me  from  one  of  my  own 
which,  if  it  is  not  presumptuous  to  say  so,  is  almost 
as  great  as  any  of  yours." 

"You  are  speaking  in  riddles,"  said  Hooker  j  "I 
must  ask  you  to  solve  them." 

Ripplemark  then  told  him  what  had  happened: 
of  the  challenge  he  had  received  as  Regius  Pro- 
fessor to  take  up  the  much-talked-of  problem  j  of 
the  debate  that  was  due  in  a  few  days. 

When  the  recital  was  over  the  two  men  were  in 
high  spirits  and  for  the  next  five  minutes  there  was 
enough  laughter  on  both  sides  to  make  the  conversa- 
tion quite  incoherent.  When  things  had  settled  down 
Hooker  said: 

"It  is  an  unexpected  opportunity  for  each  of  us 
to  illustrate  your  doctrine  of  'reciprocally  interacting 
personalities.'  I  give  you  a  free  hand  to  extricate 
me  from  my  difficulties  as  best  you  can.  And  now, 
seriously,  will  you  allow  me  to  extricate  you  from 
yours  in  my  own  way?" 

"That  depends  on  how  you  propose  to  do  it." 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

"Listen,  then.  You  spoke  just  now,  Professor, 
of  taking  sudden  decisions.  Are  you  prepared  to 
take  one  now?" 

"Yes.  But  I  should  like  to  see  first  where  we  are 
going  to  alight." 

"You  must  hear  a  long  story  first  j  but  you  will 
find  it  useful  in  the  preparation  of  your  paper.  The 
disposition  of  my  wealth  during  my  lifetime  has 
still  to  be  determined.  Were  it  not  for  the  friends 
I  have  discovered  it  would  be  an  intolerable  burden. 
I  had  a  wifej  sorrow  broke  herj  she  is  dead.  My 
three  sons  were  killed.  I  am,  save  for  my  friends, 
alone." 

He  went  on  at  some  length.  Very  rapidly,  but 
omitting  nothing  that  was  relevant,  he  told  the  story 
of  his  life,  bringing  it  down  to  the  very  moment 
when  he  found  himself  face  to  face  with  Ripplemark. 
When  he  had  done  he  said,  without  waiting  for  any 
comment  on  his  story, 

"And  now,  Professor  Ripplemark,  for  the  precise 
mode  in  which  I  propose  to  extricate  you  from  your 
difiiculty.  Will  you  go  into  business  with  me,  into 
partnership,  giving  up  your  Professorship  for  that 
purpose  if  it  should  be  found  necessary?" 

"Certainly  not!"  said  Ripplemark,  with  a  look 
of  amusement  on  his  face.  "Nothing  would  in- 
duce me  to  take  such  a  step.  You  have  told  me 
a  profoundly  moving  story,  Mr.  Hooker,  but 
this  that  you  propose  is  no  way  out  of  your  diffi- 
culties nor  out  of  mine.  I  know  nothing  of  busi- 
ness." 

For  a  moment  Ripplemark  thought,  as  so  many 
others  had  done,  that  the  millionaire  was  beside  him- 

334 


THE  PROFESSOR  QUESTIONED 

self.  But  Hooker  gave  him  no  time  to  indulge  his 
doubts. 

"You  refuse  to  go  into  business  with  W(?/*  he  said. 
"Then  will  you  go  into  business  with  me  and  Miss 
Wolf  stone  ?" 

"That  I  will,"  cried  Ripplemark,  "if  you  can 
show  me  how  it  is  to  be  done!  What  business? 
What  will  you  make,  what  goods  will  you  sell,  and 
who  will  buy  them?" 

"In  the  Kingdom  of  Ends,"  said  Hooker,  "they 
neither  buy  nor  sellj  but,  by  Heaven,  they  do  busi- 
ness!" 

"That  savours  of  Rumbelow,"  said  Ripplemark, 
"and  it  is  profoundly  true.  But  it  is  you  who  now 
speak  in  riddles.    Resolve  them,  Mr.  Hooker." 

"Have  you  not  written  in  your  book,"  said 
Hooker,  "that  there  comes  a  point  in  the  history 
of  every  philosophical  system  when  it  must  either 
be  translated  into  action  or  dismissed  as  false?  I 
ask  you  to  go  into  partnership  with  me  and  with 
Miss  Wolf  stone  on  the  very  lines  indicated  in  your 
own  book." 

"I  confess,  Mr.  Hooker,"  the  other  said,  "that 
your  main  idea — that  of  translating  the  Moral  Will 
from  a  book  theory  into  a  social  force — appeals  to 
me  strongly.  But  the  form  you  have  given  it  is  novel 
and  bewildering — something  of  a  bombshell  to  an 
academic  mind.  In  this  University  we  study  the 
Moral  Will  for  the  purpose  of  passing  examinations, 
obtaining  Professorships  and  scoring  off  one  another 
in  argument.  Ours  to  understand  the  Moral  Will 
or  write  books  about  it,  not  to  make  it." 

Since  the  manifestation  of  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr. 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

Hyde  the  phenomenon  of  dual  personality  surprises 
nobody.  Let  no  sceptic  bark  therefore  when  he 
learns  that  at  this  moment  there  were  three  persons 
in  the  room.  There  was  Hooker,  the  millionaire  j 
there  was  Ripplemark,  LL.D.  j  and  there  was  Ripple- 
mark,  V.C. 

It  was  Ripplemark  LL.D.  who  had  made  the  last 
remark.  It  was  Ripplemark  V.C.  who  made  the 
next,  and  the  next  after  that. 

"And  yet  the  Moral  Will  ought  to  be  created 
as  well  as  talked  about.  Show  me  how  to  do  it, 
Mr.  Hooker.  This  'business'  you  speak  of — what 
is  it?    Tell  me  plainly." 

Then,  as  though  a  sudden  inspiration  had  come 
to  him,  he  cried  out  in  a  voice  of  enthusiasm: 

"Is  it  Education?" 

"How  can  it  be  anything  else,"  said  Hooker, 
"since  Margaret  Wolfstone  is  one  of  the  part- 
ners?" 

"Go  on,  sir!     Go  on!"  cried  Ripplemark. 

"Miss  Wolfstone  will  be  in  Oxford  next  week." 

"I  know  it!  For  the  Educational  Conference. 
We  insisted  on  asking  her  as  a  protest  against  the 
action  of  those  villains.  And  that  play  she  has  begun 
to  write  will  be  a  big  thing,  Mr.  Hooker!" 

"I'm  going  to  back  it — the  first  deliberate  gamble 
of  my  life.  But  a  moral  gamble,  if  ever  there  was 
such  a  thing." 

"There  are  thousands  of  them!"  cried  Ripple- 
mark. "A  hundred  to  one  on  Margaret  Wolf- 
stone! I'm  glad  you've  taken  it  on,  sir!  The  Moral 
Will  Handicap  and  Margaret  Wolfstone  the 
favourite!" 


THE  PROFESSOR  QUESTIONED 

"You  speak  a  strange  language  for  a  Professor 
of  Virtue,"  said  Hooker. 

"Metaphors,"  said  Ripplemark,  checking  himself. 
"The  truth  is,  my  mind  is  rather  full  of  the  subject 
just  now.  As  you  know,  the  love  of  gambling  is  a 
tremendous  force  in  modern  civilization.  I  am  in- 
vestigating its  relations  to  the  Moral  Will,  and  I 
assure  you  that  the  results  are  of  profound  interest. 
I  hope  to  deal  with  it  fully  in  my  forthcoming  book. 
But  don't  be  alarmed,  sir.  Remember  that  by  your 
own  confession  you  have  been  gambling  yourself." 

Here  Mr.  Hooker  began  to  smile  at  his  ov/n 
thoughts.  He  was  thinking  of  the  report  recently 
spread  about  Smokeover  that  he  was  backing  "Joy 
Lady"  for  tv/enty  thousand  pounds.  And  he  re- 
membered Mr.  Hotblack's  comments  on  the  incident. 
He  was  about  to  mention  the  coincidence  when  he 
suddenly  recollected  that  "Joy  Lady"  had  lost  the 
race,  and  feeling  that  this  would  spoil  the  story,  he 
resolved  to  say  nothing  about  it. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  still  smiling,  "it's  hardly  an  ex- 
pression I  should  have  used  to  the  Society  of  Ethi- 
cal Culture,  But  I  see  we  understand  one  another. 
And  now  to  the  matter  in  hand.  Clearly  before  we 
go  further  Miss  Wolfstone  must  be  consulted.  You 
consent  to  meet  her?" 

"Certainly,"  said  the  V.  C. 

"Well,  then,  this  day  week  we  three  will  meet  in 
my  private  room  at  the  Mitre  Hotel." 

"An  admirable  proposition." 

"Then  let  me  prepare  you  for  the  broad  outlines 
of  what  is  coming.  You  and  Miss  Wolfstone  will 
have  before  you  a  business  proposition,  in  the  sense 

337 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

in  which  business  is  done  in  the  Kingdom  of  Ends. 
You  understand  me?" 

"Perfectly." 

"Assuming  that  you  and  Miss  Wolfstone  consent, 
you  will  become  my  partners  on  a  footing  of  equality. 
My  fortune  will  be  divided  into  three  equal  parts, 
and  each  of  us  will  have  the  free  disposition  of  his 
own.  We  form  a  community  of  three  with  mutual 
loyalty  as  the  only  law  of  our  relations.  Think 
that  out  in  the  light  of  what  you  have  written  in  The 
Moral  Will.'' 

And  with  that  Mr.  Hooker  rose  quickly  from  his 
seat,  grasped  the  Regius  Professor  by  the  hand  and 
said  "Good-bye." 

The  Professor  flung  himself  down  in  his  arm- 
chair and  lit  his  pipe:  Ripplemark  LL.D.  astounded 
and  incredulous  J  Ripplemark  V.  C.  alert,  eager  and 
believing}  and  the  two  fell  into  hot  debate.  Mean- 
while Hooker,  passing  through  the  quad,  was  mur- 
muring in  half -audible  tones:  "Complications  cer- 
tainly.   But  that  will  only  strengthen  the  alliance." 


338 


CHAPTER  FOUR 
Professor  Ripplemark  is  Extricated  from  a  Difficulty 

THE  proceedings  at  the  Conference  on  Educa- 
tional Reform  were  reported  at  no  great  length 
in  the  daily  press.  Half  a  column  fer  diem  was  all 
the  editors  could  spare,  the  bulk  of  their  space  being 
required  for  international  politics,  the  state  of  the 
markets  and  the  debates  in  Parliament.  But  it  may 
well  be  doubted  whether  this  distribution  of  space 
showed  a  true  sense  of  relative  values.  Had  a  Victor 
Hugo  been  present,  first  to  follow  the  proceedings 
of  the  Conference  on  Education,  and  then  to  spend 
a  week  in  attending  the  debates  in  Parliament,  he 
would  probably  have  said,  in  the  words  of  the  priest 
of  Notre  Datney  "ceci  tuera  cela." 

The  men  and  women  who  attended  the  Confer- 
ence were  in  earnest}  most  of  them  were  persons  of 
great  ability  j  idealists,  full  of  enthusiasm,  of  hope 
and  of  faith.  Among  them  were  the  great  pundits 
of  educational  theory  gathered  from  all  parts  of 
the  world,  for  the  Conference  was  international,  a 
true  League  of  Nations,  though  called  by  another 
name.  There  were  Professors  from  the  Universities 
and  a  crowd  of  teachers,  of  both  sexes,  from  public, 
private,  secondary,  elementary  and  technical  schools. 
Youth  and  age  were  here  fellow-workmen  j  male  and 
female  were  one  soul.     The  note  of  a  great  revival 

339 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

was  in  the  air  and  only  the  spiritually  dead  could 
fail  to  hear  it. 

On  the  day  preceding  the  Conference  Miss  Wolf- 
stone,  who  had  taken  lodgings  in  the  north  of  Ox- 
ford, found  a  letter  from  Mr.  Hooker  awaiting  her 
on  the  breakfast  table.    She  read  as  follows: 

"My  dear  Margaret, 

"Like  'the  Three  Wise  Men'  in  your  Christ- 
mas Play  I  have  spent  much  of  my  life  in  a  vain 
search  for  'my  neighbour.'  Recently  I  have  found 
him,  or  rather  I  have  found  four.  First  I  found 
you,  the  nearest  of  them  all  5  then  I  found  Rum- 
below  and  My  Ladyj  and  within  the  last  few  days  I 
have  found  Professor  Ripplemark.  All  four  I  can 
honestly  claim  to  love  as  I  love  myself  j  and,  to  tell 
the  truth,  I  love  myself  not  a  little.  I  wish  all  five 
of  us  could  meet  at  once  and  proceed  to  do  to  each 
other  as  each  would  that  the  others  should  do  to  him 
— neglecting  the  rest  of  the  world  for  the  time  being. 
But  since  that  is  impossible  at  the  moment  I  propose 
a  Council  of  Three — you.  Professor  Ripplemark  and 
myself.  We  have  business  to  transact  in  the  King- 
dom of  Ends.  Will  you  join  us,  dear  friend,  in  my 
private  room  at  the  Mitre  Hotel  next  Thursday? 
We  three  can  then  knock  our  heads  together  accord- 
ing to  the  Hegelian  formula.  Thesis,  Antithesis  and 
Synthesis.  Which  is  which  we  must  leave  to  be  de- 
termined by  the  course  of  events.  The  situation 
should  appeal  to  your  dramatic  instincts." 

For  some  minutes  after  reading  this  letter  Miss 
Wolfstone  stood  quite  still,  a  bright  light  in  her 
eyes,  thinking  rapidly.     She  looked  at  her  watch: 

340 


EXTRICATED  FROM  ONE  DIFFICULTY 

it  was  half-past  seven.  Leaving  the  breakfast  un- 
touched she  put  on  her  hat  and  went  out.  Half 
an  hour's  walk  brought  her  to  Mr.  Blackwell  the 
bookseller's  shop,  where  the  boy  was  just  opening 
the  door  J  nobody  else  was  about. 

"I  want  The  Moral  Will,  by  Maurice  Ripple- 
mark,"  she  said. 

The  boy,  astonished  by  so  early  a  customer  and 
bewildered  by  a  proposition  outside  "his  station  and 
its  duties,"  went  searching  among  the  shelves. 
"What  did  you  say  was  the  name  of  the  book.  Miss?" 
he  cried  from  the  other  end  of  the  shop. 

''The  Moral  Will:' 

The  boy  went  on  searching,  and  presently  took 
down  a  second-hand  copy  of  Jones  on  the  Making 
of  a  Will,  as  the  nearest  thing  he  could  find.  But 
when  he  came  back  to  offer  it  to  his  customer  she  was 
gone.  She  had  found  The  Moral  Will  for  herself 
and  left  the  money  on  the  counter. 

All  day  she  sat  close  in  her  room  reading  the 
book,  oblivious  for  the  time  being  of  the  Conference 
on  Educational  Reform.  She  read  on  for  hours, 
never  flagging.  She  read  on  into  the  small  hours 
of  the  next  morning.  When  she  had  done  she  closed 
the  book  with  the  single  exclamation  "Good! "  Then 
she  wrote  a  brief  note  to  Mr.  Hooker,  accepting  the 
appointment  and  adding  this  remark  only: 

"In  all  these  things  I  cannot  help  thinking  that 
you  and  I  and  the  rest  of  our  Sieighbours'  have  fallen 
under  a  spell,  and  that  Billie  Smith  is  the  wizard. 
Or  is  it  Plato?  In  either  event  the  important  thing 
is,  as  Socrates  says,  that  the  just  should  act  upon  it." 

At  the  session  of  the  Conference  which  took  place 

341 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

next  day  it  had  been  arranged  that  Miss  Wolfstone 
was  to  speak.  The  subject  was  "Democracy  and 
Education."  No  sooner  had  her  name  been  called 
by  the  Chairman  than  the  whole  audience  rose  to  its 
feet  and  cheered  tumultuously  for  three  minutes. 
The  audience  had  its  reasons  for  that.  When  it 
was  over,  Hooker,  who  was  seated  next  to  Ripple- 
mark,  turned  to  his  companion  with  tears  streaming 
down  his  face  and  said: 

"These  people  are  my  people.  Professor.  The 
Lord  do  so  to  me  and  more  also  if  aught  save  death 
shall  part  between  them  and  me!" 

The  summary  of  Miss  Wolfstone's  speech  as  re- 
ported next  morning  in  the  Times  ran  thus: 

"The  mission  of  democracy  is  to  enthrone  educa- 
tion as  the  supreme  business  of  mankind,  and  to  place 
all  the  other  interests  of  society  in  their  proper 
order  beneath  it.  When  democracy  has  accomplished 
this  task  its  mission  will  be  fulfilled,  and  it  will  give 
way  to  a  mightier  than  itself.  The  form  of  educa- 
tion is  aristocratic.  Education  presupposes  the 
eternal  difference  between  wisdom  and  folly,  be- 
tween ignorance  and  knowledge,  between  the  good 
and  the  very  good,  in  the  last  resort  the  difference 
between  the  best  and  the  worst.  That  spells  aristoc- 
racy— the  aristocracy  that  is  rooted  in  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  world  and  in  the  nature  of  the  human 
mind.  Aristocracy,  impossible  as  a  form  of  govern- 
ment, is  a  necessary  principle  of  education,  the  one 
and  only  solution  of  the  problem  of  fowery  which 
a  thousand  political  experiments  have  not  yet  solved, 
and  which,  indeed,  is  insoluble  on  political  ground. 

342 


EXTRICATED  FROM  ONE  DIFFICULTY 

Education  can  never  be  carried  on  by  a  plebiscite  of 
the  taught.  The  wisdom  of  the  teacher  cannot  be 
ruled  by  the  vote  of  the  pupil." 

As  Miss  Wolf  stone  descended  from  the  plat- 
form an  oldish  man,  with  a  lean  figure,  unmistakably 
a  hard-worked  schoolmaster,  rose  suddenly  to  his 
feet  near  the  middle  of  the  Hall.  He  was  a  stut- 
terer and,  labouring  as  he  was  under  great  excite- 
ment, found  himself  unable  to  articulate  a  word. 
For  many  seconds — to  those  who  watched  him  it 
seemed  an  age — he  stood  mouthing,  writhing, 
gesticulating,  and  finally  sobbing  in  the  agony  of 
his  speechlessness — a  grotesque  but  terrible  appari- 
tion. At  last  the  pent-up  energy  released  itself  in 
a  great  shout,  which  burst  out  of  him  all  in  a  moment, 
and  rang  like  a  trumpet  in  every  corner  of  the  build- 
ing. "For  God's  sake,  sir,  ask  that  lady  to  go  on!" 
But  the  next  speaker  had  already  been  called  and  the 
oratory  resumed  its  course. 

After  the  meeting  it  was  observed  that  Miss  Wolf- 
stone  made  her  way  to  the  stutterer  and  they  two 
went  out  together. 

The  place  of  meeting  for  "the  Council  of  Three" 
was  in  a  room  overlooking  the  Oxford  High  Street. 

Miss  Wolf  stone,  arriving  five  minutes  before  the 
time,  found  the  room  empty.  So  she  stood  at  the 
window,  looking  at  the  stream  of  bicycles  passing 
up  and  down  the  street  and  thinking  how  like  they 
were  to  shoals  of  fishes  swimming  in  opposite 
directions. 

Suddenly  two  cyclists,  an  undergraduate  and  a 
girl,  collided  at  the  corner  of  the  street  opposite,  and 

343 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

went  sprawling  in  the  roadway  on  the  top  of  their 
machines.  A  third  cyclist  immediately  ran  into  the 
heap,  and  for  a  moment  it  seemed  as  if  the  double 
current  would  pile  itself  up  into  a  mountain  of  pro- 
truding wheels  and  struggling  humanity. 

Miss  Wolf  stone  was  out  into  the  street  in  a  flash  j 
only  to  find  that  it  was  all  over,  everybody  apologiz- 
ing to  everybody  else  and  offering  to  pay  damages, 
while  a  policeman,  note-book  in  hand,  stood  benev- 
olently by  with  no  occupation.  A  girl  undergraduate, 
leaning  on  a  twisted  bicycle,  her  feet  entangled  in 
the  ruins  of  a  skirt  and  one  side  of  her  face  plastered 
with  mud,  was  assuring  an  apologetic  youth  of  the 
same  denomination,  whose  nose  was  bleeding  pro- 
fusely, that  'it  didn't  matter  in  the  least.'  A  butcher's 
boy,  in  the  best  of  humour,  was  extracting  a  large 
beefsteak  from  the  middle  of  the  debris,  while  a 
middle-aged  gentleman  in  cap  and  gown,  who  had 
been  rolled  in  a  mess  of  smashed  eggs,  was  receiving 
expert  advice  from  an  old  lady  as  to  the  best  method 
of  treating  his  clothes.  In  a  few  moments  the 
crumpled  bicycles,  the  hats  and  hat-pins,  the  pro- 
visions, the  note-books,  the  spectacles,  the  fountain 
pens  were  collected  and  distributed  to  their  rightful 
owners,  the  entanglement  dissolved,  the  traffic  went 
on  as  before,  and  it  was  as  though  such  a  thing  had 
never  been. 

When  Mr.  Hooker  and  Professor  Ripplemark  en- 
tered the  room  they  were  astonished  to  find  Miss 
Wolfstone  in  the  last  stages  of  a  violent  fit  of 
laughter.  She  told  them  what  had  happened,  and 
then  said,  turning  to  Ripplemark: 

"If  only  we  could  introduce  the  spirit  of  that 

344 


EXTRICATED  FROM  ONE  DIFFICULTY 

girl  with  the  muddy  face  into  the  conduct  of  great 
affairs,  the  problem  of  your  'Moral  WilP  would 
soon  solve  itself." 

"Till  then  there  is  not  much  prospect  of  its  being 
solved  at  all,"  he  answered.  "I  agree  with  you  that 
the  Moral  Will  ought  not  to  take  itself  too  seriously. 
It  can  afford  to  be  jolly  at  times." 

"One  might  almost  define  it  as  the  will-to-be- 
jolly,"  she  said  J  "at  least  that  is  the  way  your  under- 
graduates seem  to  take  it.  I  had  no  idea  that  the 
spirit  of  Mark  Tapley  was  so  potent  in  this 
place." 

"I  must  introduce  you,"  said  Ripplemark,  "to  a 
select  few  of  our  pessimistic  dons.  I  assure  you  that 
when  some  of  us  discuss  the  signs  of  the  times  all 
the  dogs  in  the  parish  begin  to  howl." 

"That  explains  something  that  has  been  puzzling 
me,"  said  Miss  Wolfstone.  "Last  night,  as  I  was 
passing  your  college,  I  heard  the  most  appalling 
howls.  I  thought  you  must  be  waking  a  corpse. 
Dogs  didn't  occur  to  me  at  the  moment.  But  doubt- 
less you  and  your  pessimistic  friends  were  discussing 
the  signs  of  the  times  and  the  dogs  of  the  parish  were 
making  the  chorus." 

"It  was  a  bump  supper,"  said  Ripplemark.  "We 
were  giving  vent  to  the  high  spirits  of  the  'Moral 
Will.'  " 

"Were  you  howling?" 

"I  was  J  but  in  a  manner  not  out  of  keeping,  I 
trust,  with  my  position." 

"So  that  the  principle  of  your  howling  might  be 
law  universal  to  all  howlers." 

^'Pardon    me — only    to    howling    Professors    of 

345 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

Virtue.    Your  conception  of  universality,  Miss  Wolf- 
stone,  is  defective." 

So  they  went  on:  Hooker  a  silent  listener,  but 
well  pleased. 

Presently  they  found  themselves  seated  at  a  square 
table  in  the  middle  of  the  roomj  Miss  Wolf  stone 
choosing  the  seat  opposite  the  window,  Hooker  and 
Ripplemark  at  either  end. 

"And  now,"  said  Miss  Wolfstone,  "let  us  begin 
our  story  from  the  Arabian  Nights.  Mr.  Hooker  is 
the  good  Genie,  and  we  the  two  Poor  Fishermen." 

"Or  rather,"  said  Hooker,  "you  are  two  Islands  in 
which  I  propose  to  bury  my  treasure." 

At  which  figure  of  speech  Professor  Ripplemark 
looked  puzzled,  but  said  nevertheless: 

"Islands  are  united  by  the  bottom  of  the  sea." 

Mr.  Hooker  now  composed  his  features  to  a  look 
of  the  utmost  seriousness,  yet  not  so  successfully 
but  that  a  close  observer — and  there  were  two  in  the 
room — might  have  seen  the  faintest  trace  of  a  smile 
flitting  from  moment  to  moment  about  the  corners  of 
his  sensitive  mouth.  He  also  assumed  the  tone  in 
which  he  had  been  wont,  in  former  times,  to  deliver 
his  annual  address  to  the  Ethical  Society.  But 
neither  was  that  altogether  successful. 

"Let  us  quit  the  realms  of  fancy  and  get  to  busi- 
ness," he  said.  "Miss  Wolfstone  knows  that  for 
many  years  I  have  tried  to  govern  my  actions  by  a 
simple  rule — ^So  live  that  in  affirming  your  own  per- 
sonality you  may  help  others  to  affirm  theirs.'  It 
has  affinity  to  your  own  doctrine,  Professor  Ripple- 
mark, as  expounded  in  The  Moral  Will.  By  a 
slight  change  of  terms,  which  would  be  appropriate 

346 


EXTRICATED  FROM  ONE  DIFFICULTY 

under  certain  conditions,  we  may  read  the  rule  thus: 
*So  live,  that  in  extricating  yourself  from  your  own 
difficulties  you  may  help  other  people  to  extricate 
themselves  from  theirs.'  Now,  I  happen  to  be,  as 
you  know  well,  in  a  great  difficulty  over  the  disposi- 
tion of  my  wealth,  at  least  for  the  rest  of  my  life- 
time. I  have  also  learnt  that  Professor  Ripplemark 
is  in  a  great  difficulty  of  another  kind" — here  the 
smile  could  no  longer  be  restrained — "and  I  have 
thought  out  a  method  of  applying  my  principle  to 
precisely  these  conditions.  I  propose  to  hand  over 
immediately  to  each  of  you,  with  your  consent,  a 
third  portion  of  my  total  wealth,  retaining  the  re- 
maining third  in  my  own  hands,  and  to  do  this  with- 
out any  conditions  whatsoever,  leaving  you  both  en- 
tirely free  to  affirm  your  own  personalities  in  your 
own  ways.  I  have  various  other  motives,  of  which 
I  will  state  only  one.  My  total  fortune  is  far  too 
great  for  any  man  to  deal  with.  On  general  grounds 
it  ought  to  be  broken  up  into  much  smaller  portions 
than  those  which  I  propose  to  hand  over  to  you.  But 
the  problem  of  breaking  it  up  into  its  ultimate  units 
is,  of  course,  only  another  name  for  the  problem  of 
dealing  with  it  in  general.  No  man  is  good  enough 
or  wise  enough  to  break  up  a  fortune  of  three  mil- 
lions— for  that  is  what  it  now  amounts  to — without 
incurring  responsibilities  which  he  cannot  sustain. 
I  propose  therefore  to  proceed  by  stages,  choosing 
in  the  first  instance  two  persons,  in  whom  I  have 
complete  confidence,  to  act  with  me  in  the  process 
of  breaking  up,  or,  if  you  will,  spending  these  mil- 
lions. You  are  the  two  persons  I  have  chosen,  not 
I  assure  you  without  full  knowledge  of  the  grounds 

347 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

on  which  I  was  acting.  In  this  way  the  breaking 
up  process  will  be  carried  out,  according  to  the  prin- 
ciples of  Professor  Ripplemark's  philosophy,  by  a 
group  of  'reciprocally  interacting  personalities' — in 
other  words,  by  a  Moral  Will.  When  each  of  you 
receives  the  million  you  can  break  it  up  still  further 
in  any  manner  you  choose.  The  matter  merely 
awaits  your  consent." 

When  Mr.  Hooker  had  finished  his  stiff  oration, 
Miss  Wolfstone  turned  a  look  of  entreaty  upon 
Ripplemark.  The  entreaty  was,  "For  Heaven's  sake, 
speak  first!  I  am  utterly  at  a  loss."  Ripplemark 
himself  was  in  straits  no  less  dire,  but  Miss  Wolf- 
stone's  look  gave  him  a  subtle  joy  and  put  him  on 
his  mettle. 

"Mr.  Hooker,"  he  said,  "for  some  time  past  I 
have  been  scandalizing  the  University,  and  jeopard- 
izing my  reputation,  by  maintaining  that  your  prob- 
lem was  essentially  a  sporting  proposition.  You 
have  proved  it  by  what  you  have  just  said.  If  I 
receive  your  gift  I  shall  regard  my  own  problem 
exactly  as  I  now  regard  yours — as  a  sporting  prop- 
osition. You  must  realize  that,  sir,  before  going  any 
further." 

"I  realized  that,"  said  Hooker,  "on  reading  your 
Moral  Will.  It  is  one  of  my  strongest  reasons  for 
m.aking  the  present  proposal.  I  have  learnt  from 
sources  which  I  leave  you  to  imagine,  that  a  sports- 
manlike principle  is  essential  to  the  highest  spiritual 
achievement.  But  by  way  of  testing  whether  we  are 
really  in  accord  and  understand  one  another,  let  me 
ask  if  either  of  you  knows  precisely  how  you  would 
apply  this  wealth?" 

348 


EXTRICATED  FROM  ONE  DIFFICULTY 

"Yes,"  said  Miss  Wolfstone,  "I  should  devote 
it  to  the  promotion  o£  individual  lovingkindness  in 
infinite  ways.  Forgive  me  for  speaking  first,  Pro- 
fessor Ripplemark." 

"It  is  your  right,"  he  answered. 

"But  what  would  yoii,  dor"  she  asked. 

"I  am  waiting  for  you,"  said  the  Professor  in  a 
low  voice. 

She  turned  her  clear  eyes  full  upon  him  and 
seemed  to  question  his  face.  "I  see,"  she  said,  "you 
want  me  to  explain  myself.  Well,  what  are  called 
the  big  things  don't  primarily  interest  me.  I  love 
the  little  ones,  and  have  longed  all  my  life,  ever 
since  I  was  a  child,  for  power  and  money  to  look 
after  them.  If  Mr.  Hooker  will  give  me  money 
for  that  purpose,  I  will  take  it,  without  hesitation, 
without  shame." 

"But  do  you  know  how  you  would  do  all  these 
little  things?"  asked  Ripplemark. 

"No  and  yes.  No,  in  the  sense  that  I  should  have 
no  plan,  scheme,  theory  or  fixed  idea.  Yes,  in  the 
sense  that  I  should  begin  with  the  first  that  came, 
and  let  the  field  extend  and  the  items  multiply  as 
they  would,  taking  them  one  by  one,  and  sure  that 
as  each  one  came  another  would  immediately  follow. 
Through  the  little  things  I  should  learn  the  secrets 
of  the  big  ones,  and  perhaps,  at  the  last,  might 
venture  to  touch  some  of  them,  very  gently.  For  ex- 
ample, I  should  begin  with  that  stutterer  who  stood 
up  at  the  Conference  the  other  day — you  both  saw 
him — as  the  one  readiest  to  hand.  By  the  way,  I 
never  met  a  stutterer  who  was  a  fool ;  have  you.  Pro- 
fessor Ripplemark?     No.     Well,  that  man  is  not  a 

349 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

fool.  Oh,  by  no  means — but  I  mustn't  talk  about 
him  now.  I  only  mean  that  he  is  as  good  a  point  of 
departure  as  any  other.  I  should  start  with  him,  and 
just  go  about  doing  what  I  could,  taking  my  own 
line  with  every  one,  without  reference  to  the  Society 
for  this  or  to  the  League  for  that." 

"But  are  you  sure,"  said  Ripplemark,  "that  you 
would  not  do  more  harm  than  good?" 

"Can  you  tell  me  of  any  rule  or  formula  that 
will  guarantee  me  against  doing  more  harm  than 
good?" 

"The  best  that  I  know  of,"  said  Ripplemark,  "is 
in  the  thirteenth  chapter  of  First  Corinthians.  And 
there  are  many  others.  But  I  can't  tell  you  how  to 
apply  any  one  of  them." 

"Aye,  there's  the  rub!"  cried  Miss  Wolf  stone. 
"Given  the  opportunity,  I  should  begin  with  the 
applications,  and  then  you,  Professor  Ripplemark, 
might  deduce  the  principle  of  my  action  when  I  had 
done.  History  first,  philosophy  afterwards,  as  you 
say  in  your  book," 

"But  do  I  understand  you  to  mean,"  said  Mr. 
Hooker,  who  had  been  listening  with  knitted  brows, 
"that  you  intend  to  desert  the  Great  Causes  of 
Humanity?" 

"That  is  the  Great  Cause  of  Humanity,"  she 
cried,  "in  the  infinite  wonder  of  its  minute  particu- 
lars! There  is  no  other.  All  others  are  of  minor 
importance." 

While  she  was  speaking  Ripplemark  was  leaning 
forward  on  the  table,  his  hands  extended  in  front 
of  him,  and  clasped  together,  his  bright  eyes  gleam- 
ing with  thought. 

350 


EXTRICATED  FROM  ONE  DIFFICULTY 

"It  seems,"  he  said  quietly,  "that  you  attach  no 
importance  to  the  Universality  of  the  Moral  Will." 

"I  take  it  from  the  other  end,"  she  said.  "You 
expect  me  to  be  interested  in  the  Universal  Will.  I 
expect  the  Universal  Will  to  be  interested  in  me. 
Here  I  am;  if  it  exists,  let  it  use  me.  Neither  you 
nor  I  can  apply  it.  If  we  try  to,  we  make  fools  of 
ourselves.  But  if  it  is  what  it  claims  to  be,  let  it 
apply  itself.  Has  the  Universal  no  will  of  its  own? 
Meanwhile  my  business  is  with  the  stutterer.  I 
know  what  to  do  and  mean  to  do  it.  No  doubt  the 
principles  are  there,  and  when  the  thing  is  done, 
but  not  till  then,  we'll  find  out  what  they  are.  It 
will  be  interesting,  and  perhaps  amusing,  too." 

"I  doubt,"  said  Mr.  Hooker,  speaking  in  the  dry 
tones  of  Ethical  controversy,  "whether  you  would 
know  quite  so  clearly  what  to  do  with  the  stutterer  if 
the  Great  Principles  had  never  been  enunciated." 

"Be  it  so,"  said  Miss  Wolfstone.  "The  Great 
Principles  have  been  enunciated  ten  thousand  times. 
We  are  not  going  to  gain  much  by  enunciating  them 
once  more.  They  are  here,  let  them  work  in  whom 
they  will,  and  meanwhile,  instead  of  talking  about 
them,  which  only  weakens  them,  let  us  give  them  a 
chance  to  reveal  themselves  in  action." 

"Wait  a  moment,"  said  Ripplemark;  "you  are 
going  too  fast.  Miss  Wolfstone,  even  for  a  flying 
man.  Don't  be  so  severe  on  the  Principles.  You 
have  just  stated  one  of  the  best  known  of  them  all 
— that  of  individual  lovingkindness." 

"There  are  two  kinds  of  Principles,"  she  answered, 
"those  that  can  be  applied  and  those  that  cannot. 
Mine  can." 

351 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

"Do  you  mind  naming  one  that  cannot?"  said 
Ripplemark. 

"The  love  of  Humanity." 

"Oh!"  cried  Mr.  Hooker. 

"Mr.  Hooker,"  she  said,  "do  you  love  Hu- 
manity?" 

"Not  as  much  as  I  ought,"  answered  the  million- 
aire. 

"And  do  yoUy  Professor?" 

"No,"  said  Ripplemark,  "I  don't.  I  have  no  love 
to  throw  away  on  abstractions." 

"Neither  does  Mr.  Hooker.  He's  far  too  good 
a  man.  He  loves  his  neighbour;  and  that  is  the  only 
sort  of  ^Humanity'  that  any  of  us  can  love." 

"And  who  is  our  neighbour?"  said  Ripplemark. 

"The  one  who  is  nearest.  The  one  who  comes 
next.  The  one  who  lives  next  door.  The  one  whose 
landmark  is  in  the  next  field  to  yours.  Not  the 
generalized  anybody,  but  the  particular  somebody. 
The  one  you  understand  and  call  by  his  first  name, 
not  the  one  you  don't  understand  and  call  an  in- 
habitant of  Kamskatka.  In  all  honesty,  does  any 
one  of  us  three  love  the  Kamskatkans?" 

"I  know  very  well  that  I  don't,"  said  Ripplemark. 
"I  am  under  no  illusions  about  that."  Mr.  Hooker 
was  silent. 

"You  will  go  too  fast,"  Ripplemark  went  on, 
though  his  manner  seemed  to  say  that  he  wanted  to 
go  faster  than  anybody.  "Consider  this.  Miss  Wolf- 
stone.  If  you  begin  to  pick  out  the  individuals  you 
love,  you  discover  at  the  same  time  how  many  in- 
dividuals you  hate." 

"And  that  is  precisely  what  people  hide   from 

352 


EXTRICATED  FROM  ONE  DIFFICULTY 

themselves  by  all  these  windy  phrases.  They  daren't 
face  their  own  hard-heartedness.  Their  soft-headed- 
ness  to  the  *many'  makes  them  hard-hearted  to  the 
^one.'  Oh!"  she  cried,  "I  loathe  it  all!  So  violent, 
so  stupid,  so  insincere!  It  ends  in  nothing  but 
speech-making  and  iniquity.  Let  us  three  get  out 
of  that  fog." 

She  spoke  with  passion,  and  her  voice  trembled. 
Ripplemark  was  still  keeping  himself  in  hand. 

"Miss  Wolfstone,"  he  said,  "I  want  to  ask  you  a 
thing.  You  are  writing  a  drama — you  told  me  so. 
Has  this  any  connexion  with  what  you  have  been 
saying  just  now?" 

"Of  course! "  she  answered.  "Why  has  the  world 
come  to  its  present  anarchy?  Simply  because  we  have 
all  been  playing  with  ideas  we  don't  understand, 
tampering  with  forces  we  can't  control,  befogging 
ourselves  with  vast  generalizations  that  mean  noth- 
ing, pretending  to  care  for  things  to  which  we  are 
really  indifferent,  professing  to  love  'Humanity'  or 
the  'State,'  while  we  despise  the  man  who  lives  next 
door — and  all  the  time  neglecting  the  only  thing 
that  counts,  the  only  thing  your  Moral  Will  can 
control,  the  love  of  our  neighbour — the  man  who 
comes  next,  the  man  whose  bicycle  runs  into  yours 
and  sends  you  sprawling  into  the  middle  of  the  road! 
That  girl  with  the  muddy  face!  She  was  immortal, 
Mr.  Hooker!  She  deserves  to  be  remembered  to 
the  end  of  the  world!" 

"The  sportsmanlike  principle  once  more,"  said 
Ripplemark. 

"And  the  thirteenth  chapter  of  First  Corinthians," 
said  Miss  Wolfstone. 

353 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

"They  are  the  same.  But  are  we  not  talking  in 
the  air?" 

"And  where  else  should  an  airman  be  more  at 
home?"  she  flashed  back. 

All  three  joined  in  the  laugh.  Mr.  Hooker  was 
the  first  to  collect  himself. 

"Before  wq  proceed  further,"  he  said,  "I  am 
going  to  test  your  reactions.  This  morning  I  have 
received  two  letters  giving  me  advice — I  receive 
such  letters  every  day.  The  first  assures  me  that  it 
does  not  matter  what  I  do  with  the  millions  pro- 
vided my  motives  are  good.  What  do  you  think  of 
that?" 

"Your  responsibilities  arc  far  too  momentous  to 
be  covered  by  imbecilities  of  that  kind,"  said  Ripple- 
mark. 

"They  are  mere  verbiage,"  said  Miss  Wolfstone. 

"Good,"  replied  Hooker.  "And  now  for  the 
other  letter.  The  writer  urges  me  to  sell  all  that  I 
have  and  give  to  the  poor." 

"The  writer  of  that  is  not  sincere,"  said  Miss 
Wolfstone.  "Had  he  been  honest  he  would  have 
spent  his  pennies  on  bread  for  the  poor  and  not  on 
a  postage  stamp." 

"He  would  deny  it,"  said  Ripplemark.  "But  his 
arguments  to  prove  himself  sincere  would  be  his 
crowning  insincerity." 

"Then  I  think  we  may  proceed,"  said  Hooker. 
"In  an  arrangement  of  this  kind  the  essentials  are 
secure  from  the  moment  the  parties  have  perfect 
confidence  in  one  another." 

"Still,"  said  Ripplemark,  "we  are  not  yet  on  a 
business-like  footing.    Forgive  me,  Miss  Wolfstone, 

354 


EXTRICATED  FROM  ONE  DIFFICULTY 

if  I  play  the  cross-examiner  again.  I  asked  you  a 
moment  ago  how  you  meant  to  do  these  things.  May 
I  ask  now  where  you  mean  to  do  them?" 

"I  have  a  profession,"  she  answered;  "and  unless 
I  am  mistaken,  Professor  Ripplemark,  it  is  the  same 
as  your  own.    We  are  both  school-teachers." 

Ripplemark  sprang  to  his  feet. 

"That  is  the  deciding  word!"  he  said.  "Mr. 
Hooker,  there  are  two  men  in  me.  One  would  live 
a  life  of  argumentative  futility.  The  other  would 
act  immediately — would  begin,  with  Miss  Wolf- 
stone,  upon  the  one  who  comes  next.  The  last  is  my 
deciding  self.     I  accept  your  ofFer." 

"Is  he  no  more  than  your  deciding  self?"  inter- 
rupted Miss  Wolfstone.  "Because,  if  he  is  no  more 
than  that,  7  shall  refuse." 

"I  think  he  is  more,"  said  Ripplemark.  "He  is 
the  man  who  does  not  love  Humanity,  but  does  love 
his  neighbour." 

"That  will  do,"  she  said,  turning  to  Mr.  Hooker; 
"Professor  Ripplemark's  answer  is  mine." 

Mr.  Hooker  leant  back  in  his  chair,  his  benignant 
face  beaming  with  smiles.  His  quick  intelligence 
had  perceived  from  the  first  that  the  speech  between 
these  two  was  gradually  becoming  the  vehicle  of  an 
invisible  drama.  He  saw  that  the  crisis  was  at  hand. 
Miss  Wolfstone  looked  steadily  towards  the  window 
as  before,  and  Ripplemark  watched  her. 

"The  matter  is  settled,"  said  Hooker.  "The  nec- 
essary arrangements  will  be  made  at  once.  And  now 
I  shall  v/ithdraw  and  leave  you  two  to  argue  your 
differences  between  yourselves." 

Without  waiting  for  a  word  of  thanks  the  old 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

millionaire  shook  hands  with  the  young  ones  and  was 
gone.  ^ 

Miss  Wolfstone  now  rose  and  went  to  the  win- 
dow, looking  out  upon  the  scene  of  the  recent  acci- 
dent.    Ripplemark  remained  where  he  was. 

Presently  he  said:  "Would  you  mind  repeating 
your  definition  of  one's  neighbour?" 

His  manner  in  saying  this  was  that  of  a  Professor 
catechizing  a  pupil.  She  saw  the  mockery,  but 
answered  quite  gravely: 

"The  man  who  comes  next." 

"But  what  if  the  next-comer  happens  to  be  not  a 
man  but  a  woman?" 

"Then  the  difficulty  will  be  reciprocal.  The 
woman  will  have  met  a  man." 

"And  supposing  that  these  two  suddenly  discover 
that  they  do  not  love,  but  hate?"  said  the  Professor. 

"Then  one  of  them  must  immediately  leave  the 
room,"  said  Miss  Wolfstone. 

Instantly  he  crossed  to  where  she  was  standing. 

"I  am  not  going  to  leave  the  room,"  he  said. 

"Neither  am  I,"  she  answered. 

It  was  done  J  and  that,  too,  in  full  view  of  what- 
ever observers  there  may  have  been  at  the  opposite 
window. 

In  this  manner  Professor  Maurice  Ripplemark 
was  extricated  from  his  difficulty. 


356 


CHAPTER  FIVE 

And  Forthwith  Finds  Himself  in  Another 

"OEFORE  Mr.  Hooker's  problem  is  forgotten  it 
•^  is  to  be  hoped  that  some  careful  student  of 
civilization  will  collect  and  classify  the  enormous 
multitude  of  divergent  or  contradictory  answers 
that  were  given  to  it,  in  the  period  of  its  ascendancy, 
by  different  sections  of  the  public,  and  by  dijfferent 
individuals  in  each.  Many  would  rattle  off  an 
answer  in  five  seconds  j  some  in  terms  of  champagne 
and  packs  of  hounds;  some  in  terms  of  Revivals  at 
home  and  Missions  abroad.  Very  often  the  answers 
thus  given  would  be  accompanied  with  an  air  of 
immense  wisdom  in  reserve,  as  who  should  say, 
"Give  me  the  millions  and  I'll  just  show  you  what 
to  do  with  them."  But  of  the  thousands  who  treated 
the  question  in  this  airy  fashion  there  was  hardly 
one  but  broke  down  hopelessly  when  cross-examined 
by  the  representatives  of  contradictory  views.  After 
the  debate  had  been  roaring  for  months,  the  solution 
was  no  nearer  than  at  the  beginning;  nay,  like  the 
Irish  question,  it  was  further  off.  Never  has  there 
been  a  greater  confusion  since  the  reign  of  Chaos 
and  old  Night. 

The  University  of  Oxford  was  no  exception. 
There  was  observable,  indeed,  a  certain  tendency 
to  the  superficial  agreement  that  the  millions  would 
be  well  bestowed  on  the  University;  in  which  par- 

357 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

ticular  Oxford  resembled  the  various  Hospitals, 
Charities,  Churches,  "Movements"  and  Societies 
which  submitted  their  needs  to  Mr.  Hooker.  But 
though  Oxford  was,  in  a  manner  of  speaking,  agreed 
on  this  point,  you  had  only  to  raise  the  question, 
"What  would  the  University  do  with  the  millions 
if  it  got  them?"  to  raise  a  Babel  of  voices,  each  seek- 
ing to  drown  the  rest.  It  is  perhaps  as  well  that  Mr. 
Hooker  did  not  bestow  them  on  the  University. 
Had  he  done  so,  that  ancient  institution  might  have 
been  rent  by  internal  dissensions. 

What  would  Ripplemark  say  to  the  Contention 
Club?  When  it  became  known  that  the  Regius  Pro- 
fessor would  deliver  himself,  the  question  flew  to 
all  lipsj  and  when  the  news  leaked  out  that  Mr. 
Hooker  himself  had  been  in  Oxford,  expectation 
rose  to  bursting  pitch. 

If  the  University  knew  nothing  of  what  the  Pro- 
fessor would  say,  the  Professor  himself  knew  no 
more.  He  was  in  a  great  perplexity.  It  is  an  annoy- 
ing feature  in  the  constitution  of  the  universe  that 
a  turn  in  the  march  of  events  which  extricates  us 
from  one  difficulty  often  implicates  us  in  another — 
an  experience  familiar  to  lovers,  philosophers  and 
statesmen.  Thus  it  happened  to  the  Regius  Pro- 
fessor of  Virtue.  On  the  one  hand  Mr.  Hooker's 
anomalous  conduct  had  brought  his  relations  with 
Margaret  Wolf  stone  to  a  most  triumphant  issue  j 
on  the  other  it  had  created  new  complications  in  his 
relations  with  the  world,  with  the  University,  and, 
not  least,  with  the  Contention  Club.  He  was  under 
an  engagement  to  offer  the  Club  a  de  jure  solution 
of  Mr.  Hooker's  problem  5   and  this  solution  was 

358 


AND  FINDS  HIMSELF  IN  ANOTHER 

due  to  be  presented  on  the  day  following  that  on 
which  Mr.  Hooker  had  achieved  a  de  facto  solution 
for  himself.  Strictly  speaking,  therefore,  Mr. 
Hooker's  problem  no  longer  existed — at  least  in  its 
original  form.  Moreover,  Professor  Ripplemark 
had  himself  become  an  accomplice,  a  confederate, 
or  active  partner,  to  the  solution,  on  terms  in 'easy 
accord  with  the  adventurous  elements  of  his  per- 
sonal character,  but  not  so  easy  to  reconcile  with  his 
official  position. 

How,  under  these  circumstances,  was  he  to  act? 
He  had  only  a  few  hours  to  make  up  his  mind.  As 
he  paced  up  and  down  his  room  on  the  morning  of 
the  critical  day,  he  paused  once  or  twice  to  reflect 
on  the  perversity  of  things  and  on  the  paradoxes  of 
philosophy.  Mr.  Hooker,  in  solving  his  own  prob- 
lem, had  created  another  for  Professor  Ripple- 
mark— that  was  the  perversity  of  things.  Mr. 
Hooker,  in  affirming  his  own  personality,  had  made 
it  extremely  difficult  for  the  Regius  Professor  of 
Virtue  to  affirm  his  without  getting  into  hot  water — 
that  was  the  paradox  of  philosophy.  But  the  Pro- 
fessor had  no  time  to  indulge  in  these  general  specu- 
lations: he  could  only  make  a  note  of  them  for 
future  reflection.  Anyone  who  had  seen  the  expres- 
sion on  his  face,  as  he  threw  himself  down  in  a  chair 
and  lit  his  pipe,  would  have  realized  that  his  gift 
for  rapid  decision  was  being  put  to  the  test,  and  that 
the  test  was  exceptionally  severe.  There  was  cer- 
tainly no  time  to  lose. 

At  all  costs  his  engagement  to  the  Club,  compli- 
cated though  it  was  by  an  engagement  of  a  very 
different  kind,  must  be   fulfilled ^    the  alternative 

359 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

was  unthinkable.  But  how,  with  any  show  of 
honesty,  could  he  treat  the  question  before  the 
House  as  though  his  interest  in  it  were  purely  philo- 
sophic? How  could  he  treat  it  as  open  when,  in 
reality,  it  was  closed?  How  could  he  avoid  revealing 
the  facts?  And  how  could  he  reveal  them  without 
making  himself,  Mr.  Hooker  and — worst  of  all — 
Miss  Wolf  stone  at  least  ridiculous?  What  version 
of  the  facts  could  he  present  which  would  be  intelli- 
gible to  academic  minds?  To  be  sure,  he  might 
appeal  to  their  sporting  instincts,  which,  he  well 
knew,  were  strong,  easily  aroused  and  closely  related 
to  their  conception  of  Virtue.  But  even  so  the  risks 
were  enormous.  An  ill-chosen  word,  an  untimely 
gesture,  might  ruin  everything. 

What  helped  Professor  Ripplemark  most  at  this 
juncture  was  not,  it  must  be  confessed,  his  phi- 
losophy, but  the  memory  of  his  past  achievements. 
As  he  pondered  the  crisis  before  him  he  was  re- 
minded, suddenly  and  vividly,  of  certain  glorious 
moments  during  his  service  in  the  Flying  Corps. 
He  recalled  in  particular  how  once,  when  the  visi- 
bility was  as  bad  as  it  could  be,  he  had  delivered 
his  squadron,  by  a  bold  and  decisive  stroke,  from  a 
hopeless  entanglement  in  the  upper  air,  for  which 
service  an  enthusiastic  Commander-in-Chief  had 
recommended  him  for  the  V.C.  At  these  memories 
the  spirits  of  the  Regius  Professor,  which  had  been 
somewhat  depressed  on  a  first  review  of  his  diffi- 
culties, rose  highj  and  his  resolution  was  instantly 
taken.  It  displaced  another,  half  formed,  which 
was  less  worthy  of  him. 

Some  days  before  his  first  interview  with  Mr. 

360 


AND  FINDS  HIMSELF  IN  ANOTHER 

Hooker  the  Professor  had  sketched  the  main  lines 
of  his  coming  discourse,  and  there,  on  the  table 
before  him,  lay  the  rough  notes  he  had  then  made. 
On  glancing  through  them  he  observed,  with  no 
little  pleasure,  that  his  own  de  jure  solution  of  the 
Hooker  problem  was  identical  in  principle  with  the 
de  facto  solution  achieved  by  the  millionaire  him- 
self. The  following  were  some  of  the  points  noted 
down  for  elaboration: 

Ripplemark  had  resolved  to  inform  the  Club  that 
the  problem  was  insoluble  on  logical  grounds  j  that 
the  data  for  solving  it  did  not  exist  in  the  present 
imperfect  state  of  our  social  knowledge  j  that  the 
whole  discussion  of  it  was  infected  by  prevailing 
ignorance  as  to  the  right  uses  of  wealth  j  that  this 
ignorance  was  shared  by  the  poor  with  the  rich,  by 
Labour  with  Capital,  by  Oxford  with  Smokeovcr, 
by  the  individual  with  the  State  j  and  that,  in  con- 
sequence, anyone  who  pretended  to  give  a  scientific 
solution  was  a  quack. 

For  the  same  reason  Ripplemark  absolutely  re- 
jected the  solution,  so  freely  offered  by  agitators  and 
others,  that  the  millionaire  ought  to  restore  his 
wealth  to  the  community.  If  he  did  so,  he  would 
restore  it  to  an  owner  whose  incompetence  to  deal 
with  it  was  only  greater  than  his  own.  The  com- 
munity had  no  valid  claim  to  Mr.  Hooker's  millions. 
It  had  often  been  said  that  his  fortune  had  been 
created  by  the  labour  of  his  fellow  men.  It  were 
truer  to  say  that  it  had  been  created  by  the  errors 
of  his  fellow  men.  Without  the  connivance  of  social 
folly  on  an  enormous  scale  such  a  fortune  would 
never  have  come  into  existence.    The  agitators  were 

361 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

always  proclaiming  that  Mr.  Hooker  owed  his 
wealth,  not  to  his  own  exertions,  but  to  "society." 
Yes,  but  he  owed  it  to  what  was  worst  in  society:  to 
its  blindness,  its  stupidity,  its  limited  intelligence, 
its  barbaric  passions,  its  national  greeds  and  to  the 
monstrous  delusions  which  dominated  the  interna- 
tional situation.  That  being  so,  the  notion  that 
"society"  had  a  claim  to  Mr.  Hooker's  millions 
seemed  to  him  preposterous,  unless  the  principle 
were  allowed  that  fools  were  always  to  be  guaranteed 
against  the  fruits  of  their  folly.  Let  it  be  granted 
that  Mr.  Hooker  did  not  know  what  to  do  with  his 
money.  But  did  "society"?  Did  the  community? 
Did  the  State?  Did  the  Government?  They  had 
only  to  examine  the  budget  of  any  great  State  to  find 
examples,  by  the  hundred,  of  the  misapplication  of 
wealth  in  its  most  stupid  and  flagitious  forms.  It 
were  more  to  the  point  if  Mr.  Hooker  were  to  use 
his  millions  for  chastising  the  community  for  the 
ignorance  and  crime  which  had  thrust  him  into  his 
present  position. 

The  only  solution  which  he  could  offer  as  satis- 
factory would  take  a  dramatic  rather  than  a  logical 
form.  It  might  appeal  to  the  artist,  but  would 
offend  the  doctrinaire — the  type  of  solution  which 
convinces  nobody  when  set  out  on  paper,  but  con- 
vinces everybody  when  it  becomes  an  accomplished 
fact.  Fortunately  the  universe  they  were  living  in 
did  not  condemn  men  to  inaction  till  they  could  find 
a  logical  way  out  of  their  difiiculties.  Otherwise 
the  most  beneficent  deeds  of  history  would  never 
have  been  done.  The  structure  of  the  universe  was 
on  the  side  of  those  who  had  the  courage  to  attempt 

362 


AND  FINDS  HIMSELF  IN  ANOTHER 

dramatic  solutions  of  problems  that  were  otherwise 
insoluble.  It  favoured  the  heroic  virtues j  and  he 
hoped  that  Mr.  Hooker  would  solve  his  problem  on 
heroic  lines.  Had  he  the  means  of  doing  so,  he 
would  advise  the  millionaire,  on  grounds  of  dra- 
matic justice,  to  devote  the  whole  of  his  fortune  to 
attacking  the  very  ignorance  which  created  it.  YeSy 
he  would  urge  Mr.  Hooker  to  give  his  money  hack 
to  ^^ society  " — not^  however^  in  the  form  of  doles  or 
ransomy  but  in  the  form  of  a  smashing  blow.  He 
would  imflore  him  to  give  back  by  hitting  back;  to 
strike  with  all  the  force  that  three  millions  sterling 
could  fut  into  his  arm;  and  to  strike  at  the  m^ost 
dangerous  feature  in  society — to  wit,  its  ignorance. 

These  metaphors  were  the  proper  mode  to  express 
his  final  conclusion,  which  was  that  Mr.  Hooker 
should  flace  his  millions  at  the  service  of  Education, 
But  now  he  would  tell  them  what  he  meant  by  Edu- 
cation— for  on  that  point,  he  imagined,  there  was 
some  difference  of  opinion. 

Such  were  the  notes  of  the  Address  with  which  the 
Regius  Professor  of  Virtue  had  originally  intended 
to  enlighten  the  members  of  the  Contention  Club. 
Glancing  through  them  on  the  morning  of  the  great 
day,  his  first  impulse  had  been  to  adhere  to  his 
original  plan,  and  to  say  nothing  of  what  had  hap- 
pened. But  here  his  conscience  smote  him  sharply. 
It  would  be  a  merry  prank,  no  doubt,  to  keep  his 
secret  up  his  sleeve;  but  would  it  be  fair,  would  it  be 
straight?  Above  all,  would  it  be  playing  the  game? 
Absit!  With  a  swift  and  angry  movement  the  Pro- 
fessor of  Virtue  rolled  his  sheet  of  notes  into  a  ball 
and  flung  them  into  the   fire.     He  would  do  a 

363 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

cleaner  and  bolder  thing — a  thing  for  which  the 
candid  soul  of  Margaret  Wolfstone  would  give  him 
praise,  as  it  would  give  him  blame  for  the  other — 
appalling  thought!  He  would  tell  the  Club  that 
Mr.  Hooker's  problem  was  solved  j  he  would  tell 
them  that  he  himself  was  an  active  partner  in  the 
solution}  he  would  tell  them  exactly  how  and  on 
what  terms.  And  let  the  consequences  be  what  they 
might! 

This  matter  disposed  of,  the  Professor  of  Virtue 
felt  himself  relieved  of  a  burden  and  of  a  menace^ 
to  his  moral  integrity.  He  would  make  no  further 
preparations  for  his  Address,  but  trust  to  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  moment  to  tell  a  plain,  straightforward 
tale.  His  self-confidence  was  equal  to  that.  It  is 
not  to  be  denied  that  he  took  a  secret  pleasure  in  con- 
templating the  surprise  he  had  in  store  for  the  re- 
doubtable Contenders,  and  laughed  to  himself  as  he 
thought  of  the  wits  of  the  Club,  whose  premeditated 
impromptus  would  be  put  out  of  commission.  He 
looked  forward  to  an  interesting  evening. 

His  mind  was  now  free  to  admit  another  topic, 
which,  if  truth  must  be  told,  had  been  knocking 
loudly  for  admittance  during  the  whole  of  the  fore- 
going meditations.  What  the  topic  was  his  actions 
immediately  revealed.  From  a  drawer  at  his  side  he 
took  out  his  bank-book,  added  up  the  figures,  and 
found  that  he  had  an  available  balance  of  £300. 
This  sum  the  Professor  of  Virtue  resolved  to  devote, 
in  its  entirety  and  with  no  delay,  to  the  purchase  of 
an  engagement  ring  for  Margaret  Wolfstone,  with- 
out pausing  to  ask  himself  a  single  question  about 
"the  right  uses  of  wealth."     His  next  act  was  to 

364 


AND  FINDS  HIMSELF  IN  ANOTHER 

consult  Bradshaw  and  his  watch.  Yes,  there  was 
time  to  do  it.  He  could  catch  the  one  o'clock  train 
to  London,  make  his  purchase,  and  be  back  by  8:30 
for  the  meeting  of  the  Contention  Club.  And,  then, 
when  the  meeting  was  over,  he  would  present  the 
ring  to  its  destined  owner,  who  was  still  in  Oxford 
and  sure  to  be  wide  awake,  though  the  hour  would 
be  midnight,  and  somewhat  late  for  a  Professor  of 
Virtue  to  be  entertaining  his  mistress.  Whereupon 
the  prospect  for  the  day  became  more  interesting 
than  ever.  "This  day,"  he  reflected,  "is  going  to  be 
wonderful."    He  was  not  mistaken. 

Meanwhile  the  coming  debate  was  being  talked  of 
as  one  of  the  greatest  sporting  events  in  the  history 
of  the  University.  All  day  the  colleges  were  tense 
with  expectation  j  books  were  thrown  aside,  games 
played  half-heartedly,  lectures  given  absent-mind- 
edly, and  poured  forth  to  deaf  ears.  Not  only  in  the 
University  but  outside  bets  were  being  made  right 
and  left  on  the  chances  of  Ripplemark  giving  a 
definite  answer  to  his  problem.  Rumour  declared 
that  Rumbelow,  Stallybrass  &  Corker  were  tele- 
graphing the  odds  all  over  the  country.  At  six 
o'clock  in  the  evening  they  were  reported  as  7  to  1 
against  Ripplemark. 

Half  an  hour  before  proceedings  were  due  to 
begin  the  room  was  packed  to  suffocation.  Not  only 
did  the  audience  fill  all  the  seats,  they  sat  on  the 
tables  and  under  them,  on  the  floor,  on  the  window- 
sills,  on  the  bookcases.  Some,  by  an  art  which  is  the 
secret  of  the  Oxford  undergraduate,  had  attached 
themselves,  high  up,  to  the  walls,  where  they  had 
the  appearance  of  hanging  from  the  picture-hooks 

36S 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

like  pieces  of  tapestry.  One  had  perched  himself 
immediately  behind  a  bust  of  Cardinal  Newman,  and 
seemed  to  be  sitting  astride  of  that  distinguished 
head,  as  indeed  he  partly  was.  Had  Superstition 
been  present  it  would  have  read  this  as  a  dark  omen. 
But  the  Contention  Club  was  not  superstitious.  It 
was  open-minded  and  highly  critical.  It  expected 
the  Regius  Professor  to  be  original  in  his  handling 
of  the  question,  but  it  would  meet  him  with  the 
tolerant  incredulity  which  befits  a  great  University 
in  the  presence  of  new  ideas. 

The  audience  watched  the  clock.  As  the  hands 
reached  8.30  conversation  subsided,  and  all  eyes 
turned  towards  the  door  by  which  the  speaker  of  the 
evening  was  to  enter.  It  remained  closed.  At  8.35 
it  was  partly  opened  by  the  Chairman,  who  thrust 
his  head  into  the  room,  glanced  round  as  though 
he  were  looking  for  somebody,  and  then  withdrew. 
At  8.40  there  were  signs  of  impatience  and  cries  of 
"Hurry  up!"  At  8.45  the  Chairman,  followed  by 
the  Secretary  and  Treasurer,  entered  and  took  their 
places.  But  there  was  no  Ripplemark.  The  Chair- 
man began  to  explain.  He  was  afraid  there  had  been 
a  miscarriage.  Professor  Ripplemark  was  not  to  be 
found.  He  had  left  Oxford  at  one  o'clock  and  had 
not  been  seen  since.  A  fresh  relay  of  searchers  had 
been  sent  out,  and  he  proposed  that  the  meeting 
should  await  their  return.  If  the  new  searchers 
had  no  success,  the  meeting  must  consider  what  it 
would  do.  The  matter  was  mysterious;  the  more  so 
as  Professor  Ripplemark  was  known  to  them  all  as 
a  man  of  meticulous  punctuality  in  keeping  an  en- 
gagement. 

366 


AND  FINDS  HIMSELF  IN  ANOTHER 

He  had  barely  said  the  last  words  when  a  young 
man  appeared  from  behind  and  thrust  a  telegram 
into  his  hand.  The  young  man  whispered  to  the 
officials.  He  was  saying  that  the  telegram  had 
arrived  at  the  Chairman's  private  address  after  his 
departure  for  the  meeting,  which  had  been  early, 
and  that  its  importance  had  only  just  been  dis- 
covered. 

From  the  expression  on  the  Chairman's  face  the 
audience  guessed  the  worst.  A  moment  later  they 
learnt  from  his  lips  that  hope  must  be  abandoned. 
"Accident  J  deeply  regret  impossible  to  keep  engage- 
ment j  no  cause  for  alarm."  So  ran  the  fatal  words 
of  the  message  read  by  the  Chairman.  What  he  did 
not  read,  however,  was  the  name  of  the  office  in 
London  from  which  the  telegram  had  been 
despatched.  This,  in  spite  of  Ripplemark's  assur- 
ance to  the  contrary,  alarmed  him  greatly. 

For  a  moment  the  whole  audience  was  aghast,  as 
though  it  had  been  just  missed  by  a  thunderbolt.  A 
groan  of  disappointment  followed,  which  broke  up 
and  dispersed  itself  into  a  buzz  of  conversation  j  as 
on  a  racecourse  when  the  favourite  is  not  at  the 
starting  post,  or  as  in  a  crowded  theatre  when  the 
manager  announces  that  a  great  actor's  part  will  be 
taken  by  an  understudy.  What  could  it  mean?  Had 
Ripplemark's  courage  failed  him  at  the  last  moment? 
Had  stage-fright  attacked  him?  Had  he  run  away? 
These  suggestions,  made  by  a  gentleman  who  had 
not  served  in  the  Flying  Corps,  and  would  not  have 
won  the  V.C.  if  he  had,  were  dismissed  as  abomin- 
able. But  what  then?  No  one  could  answer.  The 
data  were  so  scanty  that  even  the  acutest  minds  of  the 

367 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

Club  could  hardly  frame  an  intelligible  question, 
or  challenge  a  definition  of  terms. 

But  the  spirit  of  Contention  is  not  easily  baulked. 
No  sooner  had  the  shock  subsided  than  proposals 
arose  from  all  sides  for  a  makeshift  debate.  Speeches 
were  waiting  for  delivery,  and  the  gentlemen  who 
had  prepared  impromptus  would  not  lightly  throw 
them  away.  In  consequence  of  all  which  the  Chair- 
man presently  announced,  amid  loud  applause,  that 
he  himself  would  step  into  the  breach  and  open  the 
discussion. 

The  Chairman,  who  was  a  prominent  member  of 
the  Fabian  Society,  did  his  best.  His  discourse  was 
a  creditable  but  rather  dull  exercise  on  the  thesis  so 
decisively  rejected  by  Professor  Ripplemark  in  his 
original  draft — namely,  that  Mr.  Hooker  ought  to 
restore  his  millions  to  the  community  whose  labour 
had  created  them,  and  that,  if  he  failed  to  do  so 
of  his  freewill,  the  "State"  must  compel  him  to 
disgorge. 

The  result  of  this  opening  was  that  the  discussion 
immediately  took  the  form  of  a  battle  royal  between 
the  Individualists  and  the  Socialists,  following  in 
the  main  the  lines  of  an  argument  on  which  Conten- 
tion has  been  sharpening  its  faculties  for  half  a  cen- 
tury, and  which  has  every  prospect  of  performing  the 
function  of  grindstone  until  it  ends,  as  many  great 
controversies  have  ended,  by  being  forgotten. 

Midnight  was  approaching  and  asphyxiation 
had  almost  done  its  worst,  when  the  last  speaker  got 
upon  his  feet  J  and  with  him  there  came  a  diversion. 
He  was  an  undergraduate,  and,  by  the  look  of  him, 
a  formidable  one,  with  the  profile  of  Mephistopheles 

368 


AND  FINDS  HIMSELF  IN  ANOTHER 

and  a  full  face  of  the  most  charming  Innocence — 
an  anomalous  young  gentleman  whom  his  tutors 
knew  not  how  to  handle  j  for  apparently  he  did  no 
work,  though  he  managed  to  win  every  University 
prize  he  attempted,  at  once  the  shame  and  the  glory 
of  his  college  j  which  complication  was  further  com- 
plicated by  the  fact  that  he  was  the  heir  to  a  peerage, 
and  a  rising  poet  into  the  bargain.  Speaking  with  a 
slight  stammer  and  a  pronounced  lisp  the  under- 
graduate announced  his  regret  that  the  discussion 
so  far  had  been  left  to  the  dons,  and  submitted  that 
the  time  had  come  for  the  less  important  section  of 
the  University  to  make  itself  heard.  He  did  not 
believe  in  the  State,  and  regarded  with  contempt  any 
argument  which  invoked  it  to  solve  the  question 
before  the  House.  The  State  was  the  apotheosis 
of  the  general  incompetence,  the  vulgar  mind  writ 
large,  a  god  made  by  fools  in  their  own  image.  It 
was  devoid  of  Beauty,  and  therefore  of  real  value. 
It  was  high  time  that  this  idol  shared  the  fate  of  all 
the  false  gods,  that,  namely,  of  being  laughed  out 
of  existence.  Authority,  whether  in  Church  or  State, 
had  lost  all  claim  to  be  taken  seriously.  It  had 
ceased  even  to  be  fraudulent,  and  become  simply 
absurd.  Laughter,  not  revolution,  was  the  solvent 
of  the  problem  of  Power  j  and  the  world  was  merely 
waiting  for  a  new  Voltaire  or  a  new  Cervantes  to 
raise  the  chorus  of  derision  in  which  all  the  big  wigs 
would  vanish  for  ever.  For  his  part  he  could  never 
look  upon  any  holder  of  power  decked  out  in  his 
robes  of  office  without  an  impulse  to  burst  out  laugh- 
ing, cut  a  caper  and  stand  on  his  head.  The  only 
truthful   portraits   of   power-holders   he   had   ever 

369 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

seen  were  the  cartoons  in  Punch:  those,  for  example,  ; 

where  they  were  represented  as  wooden  figures  in 
Noah's  Ark,  looking  forth  distressfully  on  the  sur- 
rounding flood.  The  private  memoirs  of  great  per- 
sonages, of  which  so  many  had  recently  been 
published,  were  sufficient  proofs  that  the  entire  per- 
formance in  which  these  puppets  took  part  was  a 
mockery.  As  the  eyes  of  the  public  were  gradually 
opened,  by  these  means,  to  what  went  on  behind 
the  seats  of  the  mighty,  the  whole  apparatus  of 
power  would  collapse,  to  the  accompaniment  of  the 
universal  mirth  j  while  the  revolutionaries,  who  were 
just  as  ridiculous  as  the  funny  automata  whose  robes 
of  office  they  were  trying  to  steal,  would  find  them- 
selves without  an  occupation.  The  only  sphere 
where  power  had  a  real  meaning  to-day  was  the 
army,  in  which  he  had  recently  served.  As  every- 
body knew,  whose  eyes  were  in  his  head,  the  modern 
State  was  constructed  on  a  military  model.  It  was  a 
camouflaged  armyj  a  vast  fighting  machine  painted 
to  look  like  a  factory  j  or,  if  they  liked,  a  Big  Bertha 
hidden  in  a  Foreign  Office.  The  theories  which 
derived  the  State  from  the  family,  or  any  other 
pacific  group,  were  pure  nonsense.  It  was  derived 
from  the  army,  and  the  way  in  which  this  patent 
fact  was  hushed  up  by  political  philosophers,  who 
would  lose  their  jobs  if  they  told  the  truth,  was  a 
public  scandal.     As  for  Mr.  Hooker  and  his  like,  ^ 

they  were  the  nightbirds  who  followed  in  the  wake 
of  the  host,  always  at  a  safe  distance,  and  enriched 
themselves  by  stripping  the  dead  on  the  battlefields, 
and  emptying  the  pockets  of  the  wounded,  whose 
throats  they  had  cut — like  the  ghouls  described  in 

370 


AND  FINDS  HIMSELF  IN  ANOTHER 

Les  Miserables.  They  should  be  shot  at  sight.  He 
congratulated  posterity  on  the  new  aristocracy  of 
battlefield  robbers  founded  during  the  warj  their 
children  had  a  fair  chance  of  ruling  the  world  for 
the  next  hundred  years,  and,  if  the  House  cared  to 
look  into  the  matter,  they  would  find  that  many  aris- 
tocracies had  originated  in  the  same  manner.  His 
own  family  was  a  notable  example. 

He  was  proceeding  to  enlarge  on  the  history  of  his 
family,  and  had  got  so  far  as  to  sketch  the  character 
of  his  great-grandfather,  who  was  a  bosom  friend  of 
George  IV,  when  the  Chairman  called  him  to  order 
for  the  irrelevance  of  his  remarks,  and  the  hour 
being  late,  declared  the  proceedings  at  an  end. 

So  the  meeting  broke  up,  leaving  Mr.  Hooker's 
problem  exactly  where  it  had  been  when  the  pro- 
ceedings began. 

In  the  meantime  other  telegrams  had  been  re- 
ceived, and  the  air  was  thick  with  the  most  alarming 
rumours  as  to  the  cause  of  Ripplemark's  absence. 
It  was  said  that  the  Vice-Chancellor,  attended  by  a 
cortege  of  Heads  of  Houses  and  Doctors  of  Di- 
vinity, had  taken  the  midnight  train  to  London  on 
a  mission  of  rescue.  This  rumour,  with  others  of  yet 
darker  import,  met  the  members  of  the  Contention 
Club  as  they  dispersed  to  their  homes  through  the 
otherwise  silent  streets.  For  the  time  being,  interest 
in  Mr.  Hooker's  problem  was  submerged  in  com- 
passion for  the  miserable  plight  in  which  the  Regius 
Professor  was  reported  to  be,  and  in  speculation  as 
to  its  probable  results. 

Now,  there  is  a  well-known  tendency  in  ancient 
universities  which  brings  all   important  discussions 

371 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

to  a  dramatic  climax  in  the  question  of  "appoint- 
ments." So  it  was  in  the  present  instance.  The  last 
question  the  members  of  the  Contention  Club  asked 
one  another  before  saying  "good-night"  was — "Who 
will  succeed  Rifflemark?" 
But  what  had  happened? 

Following  Professor  Ripplemark  from  the  mo- 
ment when  he  left  Oxford  on  his  fascinating  errand, 
we  behold  him,  about  four  o'clock  of  the  afternoon, 
standing  in  front  of  a  jeweller's  window  in  Bond 
Street,  London.  This  is  a  new  adventure,  and 
Ripplemark  is  not  very  sure  of  his  powers  to  bring 
the  same  to  a  successful  issue.  He  will  inspect  the 
shop  window  before  going  in. 

There  are  many  rings  in  the  window,  and  the  Pro- 
fessor lingers  in  front  of  them,  unable  to  make  up 
his  mind.  Then  he  walks  up  the  street,  comes  back 
to  the  shop  window  and  lingers  again.  This  time 
two  other  gentlemen,  very  fashionably  dressed,  are 
also  looking  into  the  window,  apparently  in  the  same 
state  of  mind  as  himself.  The  street  is  crowded 
with  passers-by,  and  a  large  shining  motor  is  wait- 
ing opposite  the  shop  door. 

The  two  gentlemen  are  discussing  an  aigrette  of 
diamonds  displayed  in  the  window.  Presently  one 
of  them  says  to  the  other:  "Why  the  devil  don't 
they  put  the  prices  on  these  things?"  Then,  turning 
to  Ripplemark,  "I  wonder  if  you,  sir,  have  any  idea 
what  that  thing  is  worth."  Ripplemark  says  that 
he  hasn't  the  ghost  of  an  idea.  At  the  same  moment 
two  other  gentlemen  draw  up,  and  begin  inspecting 
this  and  that.     And  there  is  a  buzz  of  conversation 

372 


AND  FINDS  HIMSELF  IN  ANOTHER 

round  the  shop  window,  in  the  course  of  which  one 
of  the  gentlemen  proposes  to  the  other  three  that 
they  should  all  dine  together  at  the  Carlton  Club. 

Ripplemark  now  detaches  himself  from  the  group 
to  enter  the  shop,  but  pauses  for  a  moment  to  make 
way  for  a  lady  in  sables,  who  is  passing  out  of  the 
door  on  her  way  to  the  shining  motor,  a  small  satchel 
tightly  clasped  in  her  hand. 

At  the  same  instant  a  violent  shock  from  behind 
flings  Ripplemark  full  against  the  lady,  who  would 
be  knocked  down,  were  it  not  that  two  of  the  gentle- 
men are  now  on  the  other  side,  gallantly  supporting 
her.  For  three  seconds,  no  more,  the  six  figures 
form  a  bunch;  there  is  just  time  for  the  lady  to  give 
a  scream,  and  Ripplemark  finds  himself  standing 
by  her  side  alone. 

"You've  snatched  my  satchel,"  she  gasps;  "you 
passed  it  on  to  the  other  men!"  And  with  that  she 
becomes  speechless  and  faint. 

A  powerful  chauffeur  has  his  grip  on  Ripplemark's 
collar;  a  crowd  is  gathering;  a  whistle  is  blown;  two 
policemen  are  hurrying  up.  Ripplemark  wrenches 
himself  free  from  the  chauffeur;  but  the  two  police- 
men have  him;  the  lady  says,  "Yes,  I  am  sure  that's 
the  man,"  and  almost  before  he  knows  what  has 
happened  the  author  of  The  Moral  Will  is  in  a 
taxicab,  with  a  police  officer  on  either  side  of  him, 
on  his  way  to  Bow  Street  Station. 

On  the  way  to  the  station  Ripplemark  says  not  a 
word,  recovering  from  the  shock  and  collecting  his 
wits.  At  the  station  he  says  quietly  that  a  mistake 
has  been  made,  informs  the  police  who  he  is,  produces 
his  card.     He  explains  why  he  was  waiting  outside 

373 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

the  shop.     All  which  information  the  police  receive 
with  due  professional  reserve. 

Meanwhile,  in  another  room,  the  lady  in  sables 
is  stating  that  she  can  swear  to  the  man;  that  she 
saw  him  watching  her  when  she  entered  the  shop; 
that  it  was  he  and  no  other  who  flung  himself  upon 
her;  that  she  felt  his  hand  on  hers  as  it  was  holding 
the  satchel;  that  she  saw  the  satchel  pass  from  him 
to  another;  that  it  contained  pearls  worth  £3,000. 
The  chauffeur  corroborates.  He  saw  Ripplemark 
waiting — a  long  time;  he  saw  the  others  come  up  to 
him;  he  saw  them  all  in  earnest  conversation;  he  did 
not  see  the  satchel  snatched;  but  the  man,  when  he 
collared  him,  made  violent  efforts  to  escape. 

The  police  express  intelligent  hesitations.  But 
this  only  makes  the  lady  more  indignant.  She  will 
not  yield  a  hair's-breadth.  She  is  a  great  personage, 
and  this  is  not  the  first  time  her  jewels  have  been 
stolen.  What  did  the  police  do  for  her  last  year 
when  the  burglars  ransacked  her  dressing-room? 
Nothing!  But  now  they  have  caught  the  thief  red- 
handed  and  they  shall  not  let  him  go!  She  has  no 
doubt  it  is  the  same  man,  the  dressing-room  burglar 
— someone  familiar  with  her  movements.  She  in- 
sists on  charging  him  with  stealing  her  pearls — value 
£3,000.  And  the  long  and  short  of  it  is  that  the 
Regius  Professor  of  Virtue  must  face  the  charge 
to-morrow  morning,  and  be  kept  under  lock  and  key 
meanwhile.  Yes,  he  may  send  telegrams.  But 
these  things  have  taken  time. 

So  Ripplemark  spent  the  night  in  the  cells,  leav- 
ing the  Oxford  Contenders  to  solve  Mr.  Hooker's 
problem  as  best  they  could.     And  a  most  miserable 

374 


AND  FINDS  HIMSELF  IN  ANOTHER 

night  it  was.  Insects  attacked  his  body  and  gloomy 
thoughts  possessed  his  mind.  But  a  stout  heart,  a 
sound  philosophy  and  a  clean  conscience  carried  him 
through.  And  from  time  to  time  his  thoughts  would 
go  back  to  a  magnificent  ring,  blazing  with  sapphires 
and  diamonds,  which  he  had  seen  in  the  shop  win- 
dow. Margaret  would  have  to  wait  a  little  longer, 
but,  by  heaven,  she  should  have  that  ring!  This 
thought  gave  him  great  consolation. 

Next  morning  he  was  of  course  discharged.  A 
priori  improbability  overwhelmed  the  evidence  of  the 
senses,  which  was  dead  against  him.  But  his  extrica- 
tion was  not  altogether  easy.  The  evidence  of  the 
lady,  of  the  chauffeur  and  of  some  passers-by  was 
positive  and  consistent,  and  yielded  nothing  under 
cross-examination.  The  wearer  of  sables  was  furious 
at  the  magistrate's  decision  and  made  a  scene,  in 
course  of  which  she  did  not  hesitate  to  tell  the  magis- 
trate what  she  thought  of  the  intelligence  of  the 
Court  J  for  she  was  a  woman  of  fiery  spirit  and  fluent 
speech.  She  remains  convinced  to  this  day  that 
Ripplemark  was  the  thief,  and  has  imparted  that 
conviction  to  many  of  her  friends.  Nor  was  the 
public  fully  satisfied.  There  were  biting  comments 
in  the  gutter  press.  "If  the  accused  had  been  a  man 
of  the  people  instead  of  belonging  to  a  protected 
class,"  etc.  etc. 

That  Oxford  could  be  anything  but  loyal  to  its 
Regius  Professor,  in  these  distressing  circumstances, 
would  of  course  be  inconceivable.  All  the  sporting 
instincts  of  the  University  rallied  to  his  side.  None 
the  less,  with  his  reputation  for  "Bolshevism,"  which 
he  had  recently  acquired  for  no  reason  in  particular, 

375 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

and  with  the  rumours  that  began  to  fly  about  of  his 
relations  with  Hooker,  not  to  speak  of  his  other 
peculiarities,  the  opinion  gained  ground  that  his 
resignation  would  not  be  an  altogether  untoward 
event.  Outside  Oxford  the  feeling  was  that 
"policy"  imperatively  demanded  a  new  Regius  Pro- 
fessor of  Virtue,  one,  preferably,  whom  no  wearer  of 
sables  suspected  of  stealing  her  pearls.  And  there 
was  another  person  who,  for  reasons  quite  different, 
had  no  doubt  about  the  matter,  and  did  not  hesitate 
to  say  so.  "Dearest,"  wrote  Margaret  Wolfstone, 
"you  must  resign.     I  shall  love  you  all  the  more 

when "    But  the  rest  shall  be  silence. 

Professor  Ripplemark  was  long  in  doubt  as  to  his 
course  of  action.  For  once,  the  V.C.  and  the  LL.D. 
were  evenly  matched,  and  pulled  in  opposite  direc- 
tions. The  V.C.  said,  "Stick  to  your  guns."  The 
LL.D.  said,  "Resign." 

Meanwhile  Mr.  Hotblack,  the  psychologist,  was 
working  overtime.  His  private  room  was  at  all 
hours  of  the  day  the  least  disturbed  in  the  Office  of 
Rumbelow,  Stallybrass  &  Corker  j  but  when  the  staff 
had  gone  home  and  the  premises  were  closed,  it  was 
one  of  the  quietest  nooks  in  the  universe.  Here, 
night  after  night,  you  might  see  him  immersed  in 
the  profoundest  studies,  but  always  punctually  sus- 
pending his  labours  when  the  great  clock  of  Smoke- 
over  Cathedral,  made  by  Mr.  Hooker's  father, 
boomed  out  the  last  stroke  of  twelve. 

What  was  he  doing? 

Acting  under  Mr.  Rumbelow's  orders  he  was  en- 
gaged in  translating  the  brutal  treatment  which  Fate 

376 


AND  FINDS  HIMSELF  IN  ANOTHER 

had  just  inflicted  on  a  Professor  of  Virtue  into  terms 
of  a  spiritual  experience. 

To  say  that  Mr.  Hotblack  found  his  task  an  easy 
one  would  be  doing  injustice  to  his  great  talent  as  a 
psychologist.  His  grasp  of  the  science  was  suffi- 
ciently comprehensive  to  reveal  the  difficulty  of  the 
problem  before  him.  But  he  did  not  despair.  He 
remembered  how  the  accident  on  the  railway,  after 
resisting  all  the  solvents  he  had  applied  to  it,  had 
suddenly  yielded  a  spiritual  meaning  at  a  moment 
when  he  least  expected  it.    Still  he  was  perplexed. 

One  night,  when  the  eagerness  of  his  countenance 
and  the  rapidity  of  his  work  seemed  to  indicate  that 
he  was  on  the  track  of  a  solution,  he  took  down  his 
telephone  and  rang  up  the  Chief. 

"I  am  glad  to  report,  sir,"  said  Mr.  Hotblack 
through  the  instrument,  "that  the  signs  of  a  musical 
structure  are  beginning  to  disclose  themselves.  At 
the  same  time  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Professor 
Ripplemark's  mishap  has  struck  a  discord,  the  exact 
relation  of  which  to  the  underlying  theme  I  have  yet 
to  discover.  The  data  for  a  solution  will  not  be 
complete  until  the  question  of  his  resignation  has 
been  finally  determined.  In  my  judgment  it  is 
important  that  this  question  should  be  settled  in  con- 
cert by  all  the  parties  concerned  in  bringing  about 
the  present  situation.  They  should  all  meet  face  to 
face.  If  I  may  venture  to  make  the  suggestion,  I 
submit  to  you  and  My  Lady  that  such  a  meeting  be 
arranged  without  delay  in  your  own  house." 

In  consequence  of  this  suggestion  Mr.  Hotblack, 
attired  in  the  evening  dress  he  wore  so  seldom,  found 
himself  some  days  later  at  the  dining-table  of  his 

377 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

Chief,  Professor  Ripplemark  and  Miss  Wolfstone 
on  either  side  of  him,  and  in  front  My  Lady,  Mr. 
Rumbelow  and  Mr.  Hooker.  For  the  table  was 
round. 

"Has  it  occurred  to  you.  Professor,"  asked  Mr. 
Hotblack,  while  dinner  was  in  progress,  "that  the 
Board  of  Directors  outlined  in  your  Moral  Will  is 
in  actual  being  at  this  moment,  and  is  holding  its 
first  meeting  round  this  table?" 

"It  has,"  replied  Ripplemark.  "And  it  strikes 
me  as  passing  strange  that  the  first  business  the 
Board  should  have  to  transact  is  the  question  of  my 
resignation  as  a  Professor  of  Virtue." 

"A  sure  sign  of  orchestration^^  whispered  Mr. 
Hotblack.  "I  attach  the  greatest  importance  to  it. 
This,  sir,  is  the  beginning  of  great  developments.  I 
feel  the  moment  full  of  promise.  It  will  lead  on, 
sir,  to  the  most  beautiful  variations!" 

Here  Mr.  Hotblack,  forgetting  for  the  moment 
where  he  was,  began  to  hum  the  theme  of  one  of  his 
favourite  sonatas  j  but  checked  himself  immediately. 

Then  the  conversation  became  general,  but  so  en- 
tangled that  even  the  Immortals  cannot  report  it 
correctly.  Moreover,  My  Lady,  overjoyed  at  the 
impending  union  of  Ripplemark  and  Miss  Wolf- 
stone,  would  constantly  raise  the  level  of  the  discus- 
sion to  heights  of  Beauty  remote  from  its  starting 
point,  and  introduce  remarks  which  it  is  not  lawful 
to  repeat.  But  Mr.  Hotblack  lost  not  a  word  of 
what  she  said. 

Towards  the  end  attempts  were  made  to  sum  up, 
and  the  conditions  became  easier  for  the  reporters. 

"Unquestionably,"    Mr.    Hooker    was    heard   to 

378 


AND  FINDS  HIMSELF  IN  ANOTHER 

say,  "the  University  of  Oxford  will  have  greater 
freedom  to  affirm  its  personality  in  its  own  way  if 
Ripplemark  affirms  his  by  resigning  the  Professor- 
ship." 

To  which  Mr.  Rumbelow  added: 

"My  dear  Ripplemark,  the  loyalty  which  Oxford 
has  shown  to  you  is  magnificent.  It  fills  me  with 
admiration  for  the  University  and  with  hope  for  the 
future  of  civilization.  I  intend  to  set  aside  a  large 
sum  of  money  for  the  purpose  of  sending  young  men 
to  Oxford.  But  sportsmanlike  principles  forbid  us 
to  put  too  great  a  strain  on  the  loyalty  of  our  friends, 
especially  when  their  loyalty  to  us  is  itself  the  highest 
expression  of  sportsmanship.     You  must  resign." 

"And  then,"  said  Miss  Wolfstone,  "our  League 
of  Outcasts  will  become  an  accomplished  fact." 

At  which  Mr.  Hotblack,  unable  as  usual  to  re- 
strain himself  at  a  critical  moment,  jumped  to  his 
feet  and  cried: 

"Ladies  and  gentlemen,  the  proof  of  orchestra- 
tion is  now  complete!" 

So  Ripplemark  resigned.  He  was  the  first  Regius 
Professor  of  Virtue  in  the  University  of  Oxford. 
And  the  last. 


379 


PART  FIVE 

The  Legend  of  the  League 


CHAPTER  ONE 
A  Den  of  Thieves 

I  SUPPOSE,"  said  Ripplemark,  "that  the  ulti- 
mate ground  of  the  alliance  between  you 
and  me  lies  in  the  fact  that  both  of  us  are  engaged  in 
^speculation^ — you  as  a  gambler,  and  I  as  a  Professor 
of  Virtue." 

"You  mean  as  an  ex-Professor,"  said  Rumbelow. 
"Don't  forget  that  you  have  won  a  new  reputation 
as  a  Stealer  of  Pearls.  From  the  world's  point  of 
view  both  of  us  are  thieves." 

"Yes,"  said  Ripplemark j  "and  when  the  time 
comes  for  us  to  be  crucified  I  wonder  whom  the  world 
will  find  to  crucify  between  us." 

At  this  remark  the  two  men  paused  in  their  walk 
and  leant  over  the  balustrade,  gazing  in  silence  into 
the  blue  distance,  where  the  first  signs  of  a  storm 
were  gathering  on  the  horizon.  It  was  an  evening 
in  late  September.  They  had  been  walking  up  and 
down  the  terrace  of  Rumbelow's  Castle,  awaiting 
the  other  members  of  the  party.  Margaret  and 
Hooker  had  gone  out  into  the  park  to  meet  My 
Lady,  returning  from  the  Sanctuary,  where,  at  that 
hour  of  the  day,  she  was  always  engaged  in  private 
devotion. 

Presently  Rumbelow  said: 

"We  are  a  den  of  thieves,  Ripplemark.    Thief  is 

383 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

the  mildest  of  the  terms  The  Tracker  is  now  applying 
to  Margaret.  Hooker  has  been  called  a  thief  ever 
since  he  made  his  fortune.  As  to  My  Lady,  she,  of 
course,  is  the  arch-thief  of  the  gang." 

"That  makes  five  crosses,"  said  Ripplemark.  "It 
will  be  a  bloody  spectacle.  And  I  see  now  who  will 
be  in  the  middle.  When  the  women  acquired  their 
rights  they  forgot  that  they  were  acquiring  the  right 
to  be  crucified  along  with  the  rest  of  their  new 
privileges." 

"They  have  enjoyed  it  a  long  time,"  said  Rum- 
below,  "but  not  officially.  They  make  good  vic- 
tims. But  what  in  the  name  of  heaven  has  started 
us  on  this  Via  Dolorosa?" 

"It  was  the  cloud  on  the  horizon.  Unless  My 
Lady  makes  haste  with  her  devotions  the  tempest 
will  overtake  her. — But  tell  me,  Rumbelow,  what 
is  to  be  the  next  speculation  of  the  Firm?" 

"The  League  of  Nations,"  answered  the  book- 
maker. "Our  agents  have  been  pursuing  inquiries 
all  over  the  world,  and  the  Department  of  Foreign 
Information  has  been  at  work  night  and  day." 

"And  what  are  the  odds  on  the  League?" 

"Zero.  Nothing  doing.  No  race.  No  odds  to  be 
declared.  We  have  declined  to  put  the  speculation 
on  our  books  unless  the  data  can  be  radically  altered." 

"What  are  the  data?" 

"Hopeless  at  present.  Twenty-seven  different 
countries  have  been  canvassed  by  skilled  investiga- 
tors and  the  result  is  the  same  in  every  case." 

"What  is  it?" 

^^Briefly  this.  Each  of  the  twenty-seven  is  eager 
to    have    world-authority    imposed    on    the    other 

384 


A  DEN  OF  THIEVES 

twenty-six,  but  not  one  of  them  is  willing  to  have 
world-authority  imposed  upon  itself.  A  complete 
deadlock,  of  course.  The  horses  won't  start,  the 
jockeys  are  all  on  strike,  and  every  prospect  of  a 
riot  on  the  course.  So  we've  written  it  off — for  the 
present." 

"You  were  right,"  said  Ripplemark.  "My  own 
speculations  have  been  moving  on  lines  that  con- 
verge to  the  same  result.  The  League  of  Nations 
in  its  present  form  is  a  league  of  those  who  want  to 
govern  but  object  to  being  governed — the  universal 
formula  of  human  nature.  It  is  the  reductio  ad 
ahsurdum  of  the  fatal  problem  of  power,  round 
which  the  history  of  civilization  has  moved  in  a 
vicious  circle  for  five  thousand  years,  and  which  has 
never  been  solved  and  never  can  be,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  men  are  not  made  either  for  exercising 
power  over  their  fellows,  or  for  submitting  to  it 
when  it  is  exercised  over  them  by  others.  It  de- 
moralizes the  rulers  and  turns  the  ruled  into  rebels. 
The  problem  of  power  has  never  advanced  one 
hair's-breadth  beyond  the  point  where  Plato  left 
it,  and  he  left  it  only  half  solved.  He,  as  you  know, 
attacked  the  question  of  breeding  men  who  are  fit 
to  exercise  power  over  others.  But  what  on  earth  is 
gained  by  doing  that,  unless  at  the  same  time  you 
breed  another  class  who  are  willing  to  submit  to  the 
power  exercised  by  the  first?  This  is  the  crux  of 
the  whole  matter,  and  the  rock  on  which  the  League 
of  Nations  is  splitting  at  the  present  moment.  And 
sooner  or  later  civilization  itself  will  split  on  the 
same  rock,  unless  somebody  can  find  a  way  round." 

"I  strongly  suspect,"  said  Rumbelow,  "that  the 

385 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

origin  of  this  delusion  about  power,  which  infects 
the  whole  of  our  civilization,  lies  in  ideas  about  the 
government  of  the  universe.  My  experience  as  a 
gambler  has  convinced  me  that  the  universe  is  not 
governed  at  all. — Not  that  I  am  any  more  of  an 
unbeliever  than  you  are.  My  religion  is  My  Lady's, 
or  at  least  an  echo  of  it,  and  she,  as  you  know,  wor- 
ships the  Holy  Spirit  j  I  have  no  doubt  she  is  engaged 
in  conversation  with  it  at  the  present  moment.  Well, 
as  I  said,  the  universe  is  clearly  not  governed.  A 
year's  experience  in  our  Office  would  convince  any 
sane  man  that  the  relation  of  the  Spirit  to  the  world 
is  that  of  a  lover  to  his  beloved,  or  of  a  creative 
artist  to  a  wild  mass  of  unpromising  material  out  of 
which  he  is  perpetually  evoking,  by  a  divine  and 
loving  art,  the  most  surprising  and  beautiful  com- 
binations— anything  but  the  relation  of  a  power- 
loving  potentate  to  his  subjects,  which  is  the  very 
last  thing  that  should  be  thought  of  in  such  a  con- 
nexion. It  passes  my  comprehension,  Ripplemark, 
to  understand  how  the  idea  of  power  should  have 
become  the  dominant  idea  of  religion,  as  it  plainly 
is  in  the  religion  of  the  West — though  not,  I  think, 
in  that  of  the  East." 

"You  have  put  your  finger  on  the  root  of  the 
evil,"  said  Ripplemark,  "and  it  is  another  point  on 
which  our  respective  types  of  speculation  converge. 
As  to  the  origin  of  the  fiction  of  power,  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  the  Western  world  took  it  over  from  the 
old  Hebrew  religion,  whose  God  was  a  fighting 
potentate — "a  man  of  war,"  "the  Lord  of  Hosts" — 
who  has  since  been  made  into  the  ally  of  all  the  self- 
righteous  bullies  in  the  world.     Hence  the  belief 

386 


A  DEN  OF  THIEVES 

with  which  the  Western  mind  is,  one  might  almost 
say,  besotted,  that  the  relation  of  the  Spirit  to  the 
universe  is  that  of  ruling  it,  which  of  course  would 
be  appropriate  if  the  universe  were  a  military  organ- 
ization, but  not  otherwise.  The  belief  was  born  and 
nurtured  in  the  atmosphere  of  war,  and  is  plainly 
related  to  the  needs  of  war-making  states.  The 
truth  is,  my  dear  Rumbelow,  that  the  philosophy 
of  the  West,  and  the  morality  derived  from  it,  are 
militaristic  through  and  through.  It  all  starts  from 
the  conception  of  a  cosmic  commander-in-chief, 
ruling  the  universe  under  a  system  of  iron  law, 
appropriate  to  an  army  but  altogether  opposed  to 
humane  relationships  j  and  from  thence  the  idea 
has  been  carried  down  through  the  whole  range  of 
our  institutions,  society  itself  being  constructed  upon 
it,  with  the  result  that  war,  domestic  and  foreign, 
never  ends.  A  fool  can  see  how  it  affects  morality. 
When  a  man  hears  that  he  has  been  made  in  the 
image  of  God  he  inevitably  thinks  of  himself  as  a 
little  potentate  and  begins  to  bully  his  neighbours. 
Was  there  ever  such  an  imbecility?  This  was  pre- 
cisely the  point  at  which  Christ  and  the  most  en- 
lightened of  his  apostles  attacked  the  military 
religion  of  his  day,  and  of  course  they  crucified  him 
for  his  pains — as  they  will  crucify  you  and  me  when 
they  catch  us.  For,  mark  you,  my  friend — the 
moment  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees  of  our  day  learn 
what  we  are  after,  it  will  be  denounced  as  subversive 
of  all  morality." 

"They  will  have  to  reckon  with  Rumbelow,  Stally- 
brass  &  Corker,"  said  the  bookmaker,  "and  we  shall 
not  prove  so  easy  to  catch.    The  Firm  did  not  exist 

387 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

in  the  days  of  Christ  and  his  apostles.  And  that 
makes  all  the  difference.  But  this  'way  round'  that 
you  spoke  of.    Does  it  exist?" 

"I  believe  it  does,"  said  Ripplemark.  "You 
know  the  constitution  of  my  University." 

"It  is  admirable,"  said  Rumbelow,  "and  almost 
identical  with  the  constitution  of  our  Firm." 

"Well,  there  you  have  the  two  ideas  of  'teaching' 
and  'ruling.'  But  observe,  Rumbelow,  the  order 
in  which  they  stand.  'Teaching'  is  primary,  'ruling' 
is  secondary.  That  is  to  say,  we  teach,  not  in  order 
to  bolster  up  a  system  of  University  discipline,  but 
we  apply  discipline  only  so  far  as  is  needed  to  pro- 
mote the  ends  of  teaching.  How  does  that  strike 
you  as  a  model  for  the  constitution  of  human  society 
in  general?" 

"Unquestionably  the  true  model,"  said  Rum- 
below; "government  a  department  of  education  in- 
stead of  education  a  department  of  government.  I 
know  your  formula.  A  thoroughly  sportsmanlike 
arrangement." 

"And  yet,"  said  the  ex-Professor,  "when  I  mooted 
the  idea  in  our  sporting  University  the  Dons  were 
amazed,  I  was  called  a  Bolshevist  and  the  hint  given 
me  that  I  ought  to  resign.  But  let  that  pass,  and 
grasp  the  principle — that  the  function  of  the  best 
towards  what  is  not  the  best  is,  not  to  ruley  but  to 
teach  it  J  the  superiority  of  one  man  or  group  over 
others  conferring  no  right  to  order  inferiors  about, 
but  an  obligation  to  raise  them  to  its  own  level. 
That  is  what  Margaret  meant  when  she  spoke  of 
aristocracy  as  the  true  form  of  education." 

"I  wish  Margaret  had  used  another  term,"  said 

388 


A  DEN  OF  THIEVES 

Rumbelow.  "I  am  afraid  ^aristocracy'  will  frighten 
the  Labour  Party,  who  are  rapidly  moving  towards 
the  Firm.  And  it  may  cause  difficulties  in  America, 
where  we  are  establishing  a  new  branch.    But  go  on.'* 

"Assuming,  then,  that  the  supremacy  of  the  best 
consists  precisely  in  its  determination  to  raise  what 
is  not  the  best  to  its  own  level,  instead  of  keeping  it 
down  in  a  position  of  stereotyped  inferiority,  the 
conception  of  power  passes  at  once  into  that  of  educa- 
tion. This  now  becomes  the  basis  of  all  human 
relations.  The  power  basis  is  abolished,  and  power 
takes  its  place  as  a  subsidiary  interest  of  mankind, 
destined  to  become  less  and  less  important  in  pro- 
portion as  the  major  end  is  attained.  From  that 
point  the  evolution  of  man  breaks  out  in  a  new 
direction.  It  has,  in  fact,  already  begun.  A  new 
interest  in  education  has  burst  out  simultaneously 
all  over  the  world,  one  of  the  unexpected  results 
of  the  war.  Every  day  it  becomes  more  clamant, 
and  my  belief  is  that  it  only  needs  businesslike  han- 
dling to  end  the  malignant  reign  of  power  and  to 
become  the  dominant  concern  of  the  human  race." 

"Businesslike  handling,  and  sportsmen  to  handle 
it,"  said  Rumbelow. 

"Precisely.     But  can  you  supply  them?" 

"We  can!"  cried  Rumbelow.  "Listen  to  this, 
Ripplemark.  Our  agents — in  twenty-seven  coun- 
tries, remember — have  sent  in  Reports  which  indi- 
cate, without  exception,  that  the  world  is  on  the  eve 
of  a  spiritual  revolution,  of  the  same  nature  as  the 
Revival  of  Learning  in  the  fifteenth  century,  but 
on  an  immensely  greater  scale  and  on  far  higher 
ground.     At   the  same  time   they  show  that   tre- 

389 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

mendous  opposition  is  gathering.  The  holders  of 
power  all  over  the  world,  so  say  the  Reports,  are 
getting  alarmed,  and  when  they  see  what  is  coming 
they  will  fight  to  the  last  ditch.  But  again  they  will 
have  to  reckon  with  Rumbelow,  Stallybrass  & 
Corker.  You  will  understand  that  the  mere  fact 
of  the  Firm  selecting  a  candidate  for  favour  makes 
a  difference  to  the  candidate's  chance  of  winning — 
a  point  often  overlooked  by  persons  who  are  ignorant 
of  gambling.  Know  then,  Ripplemark,  that  the 
Schoolmaster  is  our  selection!  We  are  going  to 
back  that  horse  against  the  whole  field!  We  are 
going  to  back  it  with  all  the  influence,  the  skill,  the 
organization  and  the  resources  of  the  Firm!" 

"That  is  the  best  news  I  have  heard  since  I  came 
back  from  the  war,"  said  Ripplemark.  "I  thank 
God  anew  that  I  was  not  killed,  and  am  alive  to  see 
this  day!  I  have  often  despaired.  The  forces 
against  us  are  such  that  nothing  can  overcome  them 
save  a  league  of  all  the  venturesome  spirits  in  the 
world.  But  even  so  it  will  be  a  gamble  against 
tremendous  odds." 

"The  Firm  is  prepared  to  undertake  it  none  the 
less,"  said  Rumbelow.  "We  shall  make  it  the 
greatest  sporting  event  of  the  ages.  We  shall 
mobilize  behind  it  the  sporting  instincts  of  all  na- 
tions. As  you  say,  the  gamble  is  at  long  odds.  But 
believe  me,  that  when  the  preparations  of  the  Firm 
are  completed  the  odds  will  come  out  very  different 
from  what  they  are  now.  Of  course  we  shall  need 
your  help — the  help  of  a  mind  which  knows  what 
Education  really  is.  And  Margaret's  for  the  same 
reason.     Both   of  you  must  join  the  new  Board. 

390 


A  DEN  OF  THIEVES 

We  shall  mobilize  the  sporting  women  as  well  as 
the  men — a  vital  point.  Hooker  is  completely  con- 
verted and  will  be  a  tower  of  strength  with  his 
Quaker  mind.  And  My  Lady — the  heart  and  soul 
of  the  enterprise,  the  link  between  us  and  the  in- 
visible world!  By  heaven,  here  she  comes!  And 
just  in  time." 

At  this  moment  three  figures  were  seen  hurrying 
across  the  park. 

Rumbelow  and  Ripplemark,  leaning  over  the 
parapet  that  bounded  the  terrace  on  that  side,  and 
pursuing  their  conversation,  had  forgotten  the  black 
cloud  that  was  slowly  coming  up  against  the  wind. 
But  now  great  drops  were  beginning  to  fall,  and 
the  three  figures  had  barely  gained  the  terrace  before 
a  flash  of  lightning  shot  across  the  darkened  land- 
scape, a  peal  of  thunder  shattered  the  sky  and  the 
fountains  of  the  great  deep  were  opened  over- 
head. 

They  were  now  within  doors,  and  My  Lady,  fresh 
from  her  devotions,  was  in  high  spirits.  Margaret 
and  Ripplemark  were  in  the  window-seat,  watching 
the  storm.  The  other  three  were  gathered  round 
the  fire.  The  spirit  of  joy  was  in  the  room,  in  har- 
mony with  the  frolic  of  the  Titans  that  was  going 
on  outside. 

"I  have  been  quarrelling  with  Mr.  Hooker!" 
cried  My  Lady. 

"About  what?"  asked  Rumbelow. 

"He  has  been  asking  my  forgiveness!" 

"For  having  introduced  himself  in  a  style  so 
original  on  the  night  of  the  accident?" 

391 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

"How  immensely  stupid  you  are! "  said  My  Lady. 
"Mr.  Hooker  and  I  made  that  up  long  ago." 

And  without  more  ado  she  rose  up  from  her 
place,  placed  a  low  stool  beside  Mr.  Hooker's  chair 
and  sat  down  at  his  feet,  resting  her  head  against 
his  arm — a  thing  very  beautiful  to  see,  and  not  lost 
upon  those  who  saw  it. 

"And  now,"  said  Rumbelow,  "that  matter  being 
settled  and  all  parties,  including  myself,  fully  satis- 
fied with  the  terms  of  reconciliation,  perhaps  you 
will  tell  us  for  what  else  Mr.  Hooker  has  been 
seeking  forgiveness." 

"I  will  save  My  Lady  from  answering,"  said 
Hooker.  "I  have  been  asking  her  forgiveness  for 
talking  too  much  about  myself  the  last  time  we  met. 
And  I  ask  it  again." 

"All  honest  men  are  interested  in  themselves," 
said  Rumbelow. 

"So  I  told  him,"  answered  My  Lady.  "And  we 
are  never  more  dishonest  than  when  we  try  to  con- 
ceal it." 

"Beware!"  cried  Rumbelow.  "You  are  launching 
My  Lady  on  her  favourite  theme.  She  is  a  most 
dangerous  metaphysician,  Mr.  Hooker,  and  in  a 
moment  more  she  will  lead  us  into  the  wilderness,, 
and  we  shall  be  lost  in  mazes  where  even  Ripple- 
mark  cannot  find  us." 

"It  will  be  no  new  experience  to  me,"  said 
Hooker.    "Let  My  Lady  go  on." 

"I  often  think,"  she  continued,  "that  nothing  so 
clearly  reveals  the  interest  we  take  in  ourselves  as 
the  language  we  use  about  escaping  from  ourselves. 
The  sage  who  desires  to  be  absorbed  in  the  infinite 

392 


A  DEN  OF  THIEVES 

always  imagines  himself  standing  by  and  enjoying 
the  spectacle  of  his  own  absorption.  His  interest  in 
himself  takes  that  form.  It  strikes  me  as  rather 
flamboyant." 

"  'Tis  a  form  that  flatters  his  vanity,"  said  Rum- 
below.  "Being  absorbed  in  the  infinite  is  the  equiva- 
lent with  these  gentlemen  of  being  raised  to  the 
House  of  Lords.  If  they  were  really  humble  they 
would  be  content  to  be  absorbed  into  the  common 
clay." 

"You  are  hatefully  cynical,"  said  My  Lady. 
"Will  you  never  learn,  Arthur,  to  be  charitable  to 
philosophers?  Theirs  is  the  most  tragic  of  all  occu- 
pations. Their  desire  to  be  absorbed  in  the  infinite 
is  a  sign  of  it.  Who  knows  it  better  than  the  Stealer 
of  Pearls  in  the  window-seat  yonder?" 

"You  remind  me,  dearest,"  said  Rumbelow,  "that 
the  first  time  we  met  I  thought  the  infinite  was 
absorbed  in  you.    I  was  convinced  of  it!" 

"I  have  the  same  impression  now,"  said  Hooker 
with  emphasis.  "And  I  have  had  it  before  in  the 
presence  of  things  less  lovely." 

The  tone  of  solemn  ardour  in  which  Hooker  spoke 
seemed  for  an  instant  t©  plunge  the  joyous  current 
into  a  silent  pool.  But  My  Lady  passed  it  off  with  a 
laugh  and  the  merry  waters  went  babbling  on. 

"Oh,"  she  cried,  "that  is  nothing  out  of  the  com- 
mon! The  infinite  is  absorbed  in  everybody.  How 
else  would  any  human  being  be  really  lovable?  The 
same  with  everything  that  has  a  trace  of  beauty  in 
its  composition — the  edges  of  the  clouds,  the  grada- 
tions of  colour  in  the  wing  of  a  bird,  the  song  of 
brooks,  the  veining  of  leaves  and  the  small  things 

393 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

that  lie  about  us  in  millions.  But  seriously,  O 
Stealer  of  Pearls,  don't  you  think  that  the  advice 
philosophers  give  us  to  get  rid  of  our  finite  selves 
may  become  an  affectation?" 

"Most  easily,"  answered  Ripplemark,  who,  with 
Margaret,  had  now  joined  the  group.  "But  I  hope 
you  will  never  get  rid  of  yours." 

"I  shall  never  try,"  laughed  My  Lady,  "since 
the  very  act  of  trying  would  only  make  me  a  shal- 
lower egotist  than  I  am.  Anyone  who  is  interested 
in  his  finite  self  to  the  point  of  wanting  to  get  rid 
of  it  must  have  an  outrageous  sense  of  his  own  im- 
portance. Perhaps  you  have  noticed,  O  Thief,  that 
when  a  man  talks  of  being  absorbed  in  the  infinite 
it  is  always  his  own  absorption  that  attracts  him  and 
not  that  of  anybody  else." 

"Which  proves  how  easily  such  men  deceive  them- 
selves," said  Ripplemark.  "If  they  were  as  selfless 
as  they  imagine  they  would  be  indifferent  who  was 
absorbed  so  long  as  somebody  was.  But  they  always 
want  to  be  absorbed  themselvesy  and,  as  you  say,  they 
imagine  themselves  present  to  see  what  is  going  on. 
Indeed,  My  Lady,  I  regard  this  doctrine  as  the 
supreme  expression  of  human  egotism.  I  have 
heard  of  a  man  who  actually  set  about  it,  and  kept 
a  book  in  which  he  recorded  day  by  day  his  progress 
towards  absorption  in  the  infinite.  I  think  he  had 
been  converted  to  Buddhism.  One  day,  reading 
through  what  he  had  written  in  the  book,  he  was  so 
appalled  by  the  egotism  it  disclosed  that  he  fell 


m  a  swoon 


•>■> 


down 

"He  should  have  done  that  at  the  first  and  so 
saved  himself  all  the  trouble,"  said  Rumbelow. 

394 


A  DEN  OF  THIEVES 


'Then  you  agree  with  me,"  said  My  Lady,  "that 
all  our  philosophy  has  its  roots  in  the  interest  we  take 
in  ourselves." 

"It  is  an  affectation  to  pretend  otherwise,"  said 
Ripplemark  j  "and  the  interest  in  ourselves  deepens 
at  every  stage  of  our  reflection." 

"I  think  it  r'lses,^^  said  My  Lady.  "But  tell  me, 
Mr.  Hooker,  do  tell  me  what  your  philosophy  is.  I 
have  long  been  eager  to  know  it." 

"It  centres,"  said  the  millionaire,  "on  a  simple 
practical  rule.  'So  live  that  in  affirming  your  own 
self,  you  may  help  others  to  affirm  theirs.'  " 

"We  must  have  that  in  the  Firm!"  cried  Rum- 
below  with  great  vehemence.  "We  must  have  that 
in  the  Firm,  Mr.  Hooker!  Do  you  mind  repeating 
it?" 

Hooker  repeated  his  formula.  Rumbelow  wrote 
it  down  in  a  pocket-book,  and  gazed  at  the  words, 
deep  in  thought. 

"I  shall  place  that  in  the  hands  of  our  experts 
to-morrow,"  he  said.  "It  must  be  harnessed  to  the 
businesslike  method!  It  breathes  the  very  spirit 
of  the  Firm!     What  do  you  say,  dearest?" 

"It  is  the  motto  of  the  Firm  in  other  language," 
said  My  Lady. 

"With  immense  scope  for  the  sportsmanlike  prin- 
ciple!" cried  Rumbelow.  "Immense!  And  the 
ideal  aim  is  manifest.  All  that  it  needs  is  the  busi- 
nesslike method." 

"The  businesslike  method  will  be  understood," 
answered  Hooker  j  "but  whenever  you  mention  your 
'sportsmanlike  principle'  the  world  will  be  mystified 
and  bewildered.    It  will  strike  a  jarring  note  in  vul- 

395 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

gar  minds.  They  will  find  it  a  discord,  an  impurity, 
an  adulteration.  They  will  say  it  has  no  place  in 
the  realm  of  the  Good." 

"It  belongs  to  the  realm  of  the  Beautiful,  where 
all  great  enterprises  are  born  and  nurtured,"  said 
My  Lady.  "It  is  another  name  for  the  high  ro- 
mance of  the  spirit.  It  marks  the  point  where  Law 
turns  into  Love,  and  the  prose  of  life  becomes 
poetry,  and  the  music  begins.  Without  it,  Mr. 
Hooker,  your  own  philosophy  would  have  no  power 
and  no  radiance.  It  would  wither  for  lack  of  light 
and  joy,  as  all  bare  moralities  have  withered  and 
will  wither  to  the  end  of  time." 

"Did  I  not  say  she  was  a  dangerous  metaphysi- 
cian?" broke  in  Rumbelow. 

"One  of  the  most  dangerous  I  have  ever  met," 
said  Ripplemark. 

"It  seems  to  me,"  Hooker  continued,  "that  your 
principle  might  be  otherwise  named.  ^Sportsman- 
like'  breaks  the  connexion." 

"On  the  contrary,"  said  Rumbelow,  "it  is  a  bridge 
between  time  and  eternity.  Of  all  the  forces  that 
sway  the  life  of  man,  the  sporting  instinct  is  the 
easiest  transformed  into  its  spiritual  equivalents." 

"At  least,"  said  Hooker,  "I  can  bear  testimony 
that  it  saved  my  life." 

"And  mine,"  said  Rumbelow,  with  a  glance  at 
Margaret. 

"But  it  left  me  to  drown,"  said  Ripplemark. 

"It  died  on  Calvary,"  said  Margaret. 

"But  rose  again  the  third  day,"  said  My  Lady. 

"Amen!"  said  Mr.  Hooker. 

He  spoke  this  word  in  a  low  and  solemn  tone. 

396 


A  DEN  OF  THIEVES 

Barely  had  it  passed  his  lips  when  a  flash  of  forked 
lightning  ripped  across  the  sky,  leapt  into  the  dark- 
ening room  and  revealed  the  faces  of  the  five  to  one 
another.  Then  the  rain  lashed  and  beat  upon  the 
window-panes,  and  a  peal  of  thunder,  bursting  imme- 
diately overhead,  shook  the  great  house  to  its  foun- 
dations. 

Suddenly  all  became  still  and  Rumbelow  pursued 
his  theme. 

"When  the  sporting  instinct  is  absent,  Mr. 
Hooker,  moral  principles  are  invariably  perverted 
into  instruments  of  iniquity.  Witness  the  attack 
upon  Margaret.  Witness  the  present  relations  of 
states  and  governments.  Their  meanness  and  in- 
humanity to  one  another  are  execrable;  and  each  in 
turn  justifies  injustice  in  the  name  of  a  perverted 
moral  principle.  Your  own  maxim,  good  as  it  is, 
would  be  unsafe  in  the  hands  of  any  man  who  was 
not  a  sportsman  at  heart." 

"I  have  often  reflected,"  said  Hooker,  "how  easily 
bad  men  might  capture  my  rule,  twist  it  to  their  own 
ends,  and  use  it  as  a  cover  for  the  vilest  mis- 
deeds." 

"All  the  highest  truths  are  exposed  to  the  same 
danger.  The  sportsmanlike  principle  is  their  only 
protection,"  said  Ripplemark. 

"They  share  it  with  life  in  general,"  said  Rum- 
below. "Unless  our  courage  can  face  the  risk  of 
being  in  the  wrong  we  shall  never  find  ourselves 
in  the  right.  Every  great  principle  gambles  with  the 
risks  of  its  misapplication:  and  for  that  reason  every 
moral  enterprise  turns  out  to  be  a  sporting  proposi- 
tion.   There,  Mr.  Hooker,  is  the  philosophy  of  the 

397 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

Firm  in  a  nutshell.  You  will  observe  that  it  is 
complementary  to  your  own." 

"I  must  admit,"  said  Hooker,  "that  the  only  per- 
son I  have  known  who  took  my  principle  seriously 
is  the  woman  who  has  just  gone  back  to  the  window- 
seat.  To  all  the  rest  it  was  a  mere  theme  for  dis- 
cussion. Whether  they  agreed  with  it  or  not,  and 
with  most  of  them  it  was  a  point  of  honour  not  to 
agree,  it  made  no  perceptible  difference  to  their 
daily  lives." 

"Be  thankful  it  was  no  worse,"  said  Rumbelow. 
"If  the  devil  had  heard  of  your  Principle  he  would 
have  adopted  it  at  once  and  used  it  to  make  hell  more 
efficient." 

"Silence!"  cried  My  Lady.  "We  have  had 
enough  cynicism  for  to-day.  Mr.  Hooker,  you  are 
not  the  first  propounder  of  great  truths  who  has  had 
a  woman  for  his  chief  disciple.  Yours  will  not 
betray  you." 

"Yes,  dearest,"  said  Rumbelow j  "you  have  your 
Jaels,  but  Judas  is  a  peculiar  product  of  the  male 
denomination." 

At  the  mention  of  this  name  Mr.  Hooker  winced, 
and  looking  at  his  watch  declared  that  it  was  time 
to  dress  for  dinner.     He  left  the  room. 

"What  has  happened  to  Mr.  Hooker?"  asked 
Rumbelow,  when  he  was  gone. 

"His  wounds  ache,"  said  Margaret. 


398^ 


CHAPTER  TWO 

"Les  Beaux  Esprits  s'entendent" 

"OILLIE  SMITH,  eldest  son  to  the  Professor 
-^  of  History  in  the  University  of  Smokeover, 
was  lying  outstretched  in  his  bed,  a  much  damaged 
and  disillusioned  pacifist.  His  wounds  were  a  black 
eye,  a  torn  scalp,  a  dislocated  thumb  and  a  broken 
arm.     By  his  bedside  sat  Margaret,  nee  Wolfstone. 

"Father  has  forbidden  us  to  play  the  League  of 
Nations  any  more,"  said  Billie.  "He  says  it's  a  dan- 
gerous game.  And  he's  cross  with  you  for  putting 
us  up  to  it." 

"I'm  very  sorry,  Billie.  But  tell  me  how  it  hap- 
pened." 

"It  all  ended  in  a  regular  set-to,"  said  Billie. 

"But  who  began  it?" 

"Ted.  He  took  Germany  after  all.  I  took  Eng- 
land. We  settled  it  beforehand  that  Ted  was  to 
begin  by  repenting.  But  he  was  in  the  beastliest 
temper  you  ever  saw  because  he  had  to  be  Germany, 
and  wouldn't  repent,  and  began  hitting  everybody. 
And  America  took  his  side,  and  then  Japan  hit 
America  on  the  nose." 

"And  who  gave  you  that  dreadful  black  eye?" 

"America.    But  I  gave  America  one  back!" 

"And  how  did  you  get  your  broken  arm?" 

"Oh,  the  bull  did  that!" 

399 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

"The  bull!  I  thought  he  was  in  the  next  field — 
the  one  where  you  played  the  Union  of  the 
Churches." 

"He  was,  but  he  got  into  ours.  He  saw  us  scrap- 
ping, and  Father  says  it  excited  him,  and  so  he 
broke  through  the  hedge  and  charged  bang  into  the 
middle  of  us,  before  we  saw  he  was  coming." 

"Did  Ted  get  hurt?" 

"Not  much;  only  his  new  suit  was  spoilt.  The 
bull  got  his  horn  through  the — under  his  jacket, 
and  mother's  been  mending  his  trousers  ever  since. 
She  says  it's  just  ruined.  And  it  cost  Father  ever 
such  a  lot." 

"We  must  ask  Mr.  Hooker  to  have  that  bull 
chained  up." 

"I  wish  he  would.  You  won't  catch  me  playing 
in  those  fields  again  while  he's  about!  I  say.  Miss 
Wolf  stone — oh,  I'm  so  sorry,  I  quite  forgot 
that " 

"Call  me  Margaret,  Billie,"  she  said. 

"All  right,  that'll  be  jolly.  But  I  say,  why  does 
the  bull  always  charge  us  when  we're  playing  at 
being  friends?" 

"That's  because  you're  only  flaying^  Billie.  If 
you  really  meant  it  he  wouldn't  charge  you." 

"I  don't  understand  that,"  said  Billie. 

Not  long  afterwards  Margaret  had  important 
business  with  Mr.  Rumbelow  in  his  private  ofiice. 
The  business  done,  she  took  occasion  to  report  to  him 
the  foregoing  conversation  with  Billie. 

"It  throws  an  interesting  light  on  our  problem," 
said  Rumbelow.  "The  bull  is  going  to  be  our  diffi- 
culty.    I  shall  set  Hotblack  to  study  his  mind.     But 

400 


"LES  BEAUX  ESPRITS" 


one  thing  is  clear,  Margaret.  We  must  have  that 
boy  in  the  Firm.  He  has  in  him  the  making  of  a 
great   sportsman.      I   shall   approach   his   father   at 


once." 


"I  think,"  said  Margaret,  "that  with  little  diffi- 
culty we  could  get  the  father  as  well.  He  is  by  far 
the  most  humane  and  sensible  of  that  group,  and,  as 
you  know,  an  accomplished  historian.  We  are  weak 
on  the  historical  side,  Arthur,  and  there  is  not  a 
doubt  that  Professor  Smith  would  be  a  great  acqui' 
sition  to  the  Firm." 

As  other  Voices  have  told,  there  is  nothing  more 
interesting  to  the  candid  mind  than  the  strange  link- 
age of  causes  and  effects  by  which  great  events  are 
brought  about  in  this  vast  imbroglio  which  plain 
men  calj.  Life,  and  philosophers  Experience.  One 
would  have  thought  that  in  the  whole  realm  of 
Moral  Being  no  two  institutions  could  stand  further 
apart  from  one  another  than  the  Firm  of  Mr.  Rum- 
below  and  the  Smokeover  Branch  of  the  Society  for 
Ethical  Culture.  None  the  less  it  had  been  ordained 
by  the  Contrivers  of  Sport  that  Billie  Smith  was  to 
act  as  a  link,  or  point  of  contact,  between  the  two. 
Through  his  friendship  with  Margaret  he  won  the 
admiring  notice  of  Mr.  Rumbelow,  who  became 
forthwith  Billie's  hero,  not  least  on  the  ground  of 
his  amazing  talent  in  the  invention  of  new  games, 
of  which  Billie  was  swift  to  take  advantage.  The 
result  was  that  Billie  and  his  companions  transferred 
their  scene  of  operations  from  Mr.  Hooker's  field 
to  Mr.  Rumbelow's  park,  where  there  was  no  bull, 
and  where  My  Ladv  and  Margaret  and  three  very 

401 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

sympathetic  gentlemen  would  sometimes  watch  the 
games  from  the  terrace.  From  this  point  no  great 
distance  had  to  be  traversed  before  Professor  and 
Mrs.  Smith  found  themselves  guests  at  Mr.  Rum- 
below's  dinner  table,  and  in  the  presence  of  that 
radiant  being  whose  beauty  was  only  another  name 
for  her  goodness.  Next,  by  a  series  of  steps  which 
can  be  easily  imagined,  Professor  Smith  resigned  the 
Chair  of  History  in  the  University  of  Smokeover 
and  became  chief  manager  of  the  Historical  Depart- 
ment of  Mr.  Rumbelow's  Firm,  at  a  salary  of  £2,000 
a  year,  and  on  the  understanding  that  a  stool  in  the 
office  should  be  kept  vacant  for  Billie  on  the  comple- 
tion of  his  Oxford  course,  which  Mr.  Rumbelow 
insisted  upon  his  taking  in  due  time. 

Then  began  that  strange  process  of  absorption, 
which  is  still  astonishing  the  inhabitants  of  Smoke- 
over  and  making  a  mock  of  all  the  prophets  who  have 
ever  appeared  in  that  forward-looking  city.  To 
begin  with,  all  that  was  alive  in  the  Ethical  Society, 
and  there  was  a  good  deal,  was  gradually  absorbed 
into  Mr.  Rumbelow's  Firm.  Lucrative  and  con- 
genial employment  was  found  for  the  two  agitators, 
for  the  spiritualists,  for  the  designer  of  women's 
frocks  and  for  Mr.  Whistlefield,  the  champion  of 
the  Simple  Life.  Nor  was  this  all.  To  capture  the 
Ethical  Society  was  to  capture  a  position  command- 
ing the  University  and  the  Council  of  the  High 
School  for  Girls.  Professor  Smith  was  a  member 
of  all  three  bodies,  and  there  were  other  similar 
pluralists.  Hence  it  was  that  the  public  became  grad- 
ually accustomed  to  professorial  secessions  in  the 
direction  already  taken  bv  Professor  Smith.     In  due 

402 


«LES  BEAUX  ESPRITS" 

course  Professor  Giles,  the  psychologist,  and  Pro- 
fessor Marchbanks,  the  economist,  both  followed  the 
example  of  the  historian,  and  the  talk  now  is  that,  if 
this  kind  of  thing  goes  on  much  longer,  Mr.  Rum- 
below's  Firm  will  itself  become  the  headquarters 
of  the  University  of  Smokeover,  though  in  a  trans- 
figured form,  and  under  a  new  motto — that,  namely, 
of  "ideal  aims,  businesslike  methods  and  sportsman- 
like principles." 

But  what  had  happened  in  Mr.  Rumbelow's  Firm 
to  render  possible  such  startling  changes? 

At  the  great  banquet  which  had  marked  the  re- 
opening of  his  business  after  the  war  Mr.  Rumbelow 
had  promised  the  transfiguration  of  the  Firm — 
transfiguration  without  sacrifice  of  historical  con- 
tinuity.    And  he  had  kept  his  word. 

To  put  the  least  thing  first,  the  name  of  the  Firm 
had  been  changed.  It  was  no  longer  "Rumbelow, 
Stallybrass  &  Corker,"  but  "Rumbelow,  Hooker  & 
Ripplemark." 

But  this  was  nothing  to  the  inner  transfiguration 
which  had  been  accomplished  by  the  fusion  of  minds, 
or,  as  Ripplemark  would  say,  through  the  gathering 
together  of  "reciprocally  interacting  personalities." 

The  most  remarkable  instance  of  fusion  was  that 
which  had  taken  place  between  the  speculative  ideas 
of  Ripplemark  and  the  sportsmanlike  temperament 
of  Mr.  Rumbelow.  Ripplemark  had  imported  into 
the  mind  of  the  Firm  the  whole  system  of  philosophy 
which  he  had  set  forth  in  The  Moral  Willy  not  dis- 
placing the  philosophy  of  Rumbelow  but  assimilating 
it  as  nourishment — a  true  syncretism.  After  con- 
sultation with  My  Lady,  who  was  fully  in  accord 

403 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

with  him,  Ripplemark  insisted  that  the  first  business 
to  be  transacted  by  the  new  syndicate,  or  Board  of 
Directors,  should  be  precisely  that  which  he  had 
outlined  in  The  Moral  Will — the  business,  namely, 
of  establishing  a  fraternal  community  among  the 
nations  of  mankind. 

The  Seven  Mighty  Men  were  then  summoned  be- 
fore the  Board  and  informed  by  Rumbelow  of  the 
business  in  hand.  He  told  them  that  the  first  draft 
of  the  enterprise  would  be  left  in  their  hands.  In 
seeking  their  model,  he  said,  they  were  on  no  account 
to  copy  the  features  of  any  existing  government  or 
state.  They  were  to  look  rather  to  the  type  of  struc- 
ture represented  by  a  University — they  were,  in- 
deed, to  contrive  a  world-wide  University,  or 
teaching  institution,  as  the  first  form  in  which  the 
common  interests  of  mankind  might  be  correlated 
and  organized. 

"In  carrying  out  this  commission,"  said  Mr.  Rum- 
below, "you  will  remember  that  the  word  'policy' 
is  not  to  appear.  The  Board  has  decided  that  the 
idea  connoted  by  this  word  is  the  mother  of  mean- 
ness. From  this  time  onwards  it  is  discharged  from 
the  vocabulary  of  the  Firm.  .  .  ." 

"It  is  the  intention  of  the  Firm,"  he  went  on,  "to 
send  mankind  to  school  in  whole  communities,  from 
the  old  men  to  the  children.  You  will  therefore 
deal  with  the  nations  first,  as  independent  units  and 
as  members  of  a  common  organism,  the  Board  hav- 
ing decided  that  it  is  idle  to  attack  the  reign  of 
ignorance  elsewhere  until  it  has  been  attacked  on 
international  ground.  From  that  high  ground  we 
shall  work  downwards  and  inwards,  tracking  ignor- 

404 


"LES  BEAUX  ESPRITS" 

ance  to  its  remotest  lairs  and  pursuing  it  to  the  utmost 
bounds  of  the  shadow  of  death. 

"You  will  base  your  work  on  the  principle  that 
man's  primary  need  is  to  be  redeemed  from  his 
ignorance.  You  will  then  proceed  to  correlate  this 
conception  with  Mr.  Hooker's  philosophy  j  that  is 
to  say,  you  will  devise  for  each  nation  in  turn  a  form 
of  education  by  which  it  may  learn  so  to  affirm  its 
own  personality  as  to  help  other  nations  to  affirm 
theirs.  Having  formulated  your  ideas  in  language 
intelligible  to  all  human  beings  you  will  pass  on 
your  results,  first,  to  our  Propaganda  Department 
for  world-wide  transmission,  then,  to  the  Mathe- 
matical Laboratory,  when  the  odds  on  success  will 
be  immediately  computed. 

"Meanwhile  our  other  Departments  will  be  over- 
hauling every  branch  and  variety  of  education  in 
its  relation  to  the  true  end  of  man.  The  results,  as 
they  come  in,  will  be  placed  in  your  hands,  and  you 
will  at  once  proceed  to  co-ordinate  them  with  your 
international  constructions,  making  such  modifica- 
tions as  you  may  deem  necessary  to  secure  the  ut- 
most unity  of  the  spirit  with  the  utmost  diversity  of 
operation  in  the  progress  of  the  human  race.  And 
mark  this  especially:  your  conception  of  Progress 
is  to  be  governed  throughout  by  the  Motto  of  the 
Firm. 

"The  preliminary  odds  in  favour  of  success  have 
been  reported  from  the  Mathematical  Laboratory  as 
2  to  1 .  Encouraging  as  these  odds  are,  they  indicate 
that  we  are  far  from  the  limit  of  absolute  certainty. 
The  risk  of  bankruptcy  and  ruin  has  to  be  faced. 

"Any  intervals  of  leisure  you  may  find,  during 

405 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

office  hours,  you  will  employ  in  meditating  upon 
this  contingency  and  in  taking  counsel  with  one  an- 
other. In  the  event  of  our  overthrow,  under  the 
impact  of  brutal  and  unintelligent  forces,  the  Board 
will  look  to  the  Seven  Mighty  Men  to  do  their 
duty  at  the  head  of  the  Staff.  We  shall  then  all 
perish  together,  as  sportsmen  should  j  the  pageant 
will  be  ended,  the  book  of  the  Firm  will  be  drowned 
and  not  a  wrack  will  be  left  behind. 

"Finally  you  will  bear  in  mind  that  the  question  of 
our  success  in  the  visible  world  is  regarded  by  the 
Board  as  of  little  importance.  It  is  only  at  the  Un- 
real End  of  Things,  to  which  Smokeover  and  all  its 
villainies  belong,  that  defeat  can  overtake  an  enter- 
prise such  as  ours.  Viewed  from  the  Real  World, 
in  which  the  Firm  has  laid  its  foundations,  our  over- 
throw in  the  realm  of  shadows  would  be  our  victory 
in  the  realm  of  substance,  provided  always  that  in 
the  moment  of  our  downfall  we  quit  ourselves  like 
sportsmen,  thereby  revealing  to  the  world  the  eternal 
dwelling-place  of  our  designs." 

On  receiving  these  instructions  the  Seven  Mighty 
Men  said  through  their  spokesman,  "We  under- 
stand" j  bowed  low  to  My  Lady  and  retired  from  the 
Board  Room.  They  were  not  in  the  habit  of  making 
speeches. 

The  next  step  was  to  overhaul  the  entire  machinery 
of  the  Firm,  to  examine  each  one  of  its  endless  rami- 
fications, with  a  view  to  introducing  such  changes  in 
detail  as  the  new  enterprise  might  require,  so  that, 
when  the  hour  was  ripe,  this  immense  complex  of 
interacting  forces  might  be  turned  on,  in  its  business- 
like majesty  and  irresistible  momentum,  to  the  work 

406 


"LES  BEAUX  ESPRITS" 

in  hand.  Finally,  the  cloud  of  telegraph  wires  over- 
head was  minutely  inspected,  a  thousand  new  ones 
were  added,  and  orders  given  for  the  erection  of  a 
wireless  apparatus  that  would  command  half  the 
world. 

All  being  reported  in  perfect  order  the  Head 
Mathematical  Expert  was  called  into  the  Board 
Room,  where  a  long  conversation  took  place  between 
him  and  Mr.  Rumbelow  in  the  technical  language 
of  betting.  The  upshot  was  that  the  Expert  under- 
took to  report  the  odds,  hour  by  hour,  on  each  im- 
portant step  undertaken  by  the  Board. 

"The  Board,"  said  the  Expert,  "will  be  interested 
to  learn  that,  though  the  Department  has  not  yet 
completed  its  calculations,  we  have  been  able  to 
arrive  at  a  more  accurate  estimate  of  our  chances. 
On  the  data  now  before  us  the  Department  gives  the 
odds  on  the  whole  enterprise  as  3  to  1  in  favour  of 
success.  I  state  these  figures  under  reserve.  They 
are  subject  to  revision  according  to  the  march  of 
events." 

"Remember,"  said  Rumbelow,  in  dismissing  him, 
'^that  you  are  responsible  for  maintaining  the  histori- 
cal continuity  of  the  Firm." 

"Such  were  the  inner  transfigurations.  The  touch 
which  gave  them  their  final  form  was  the  touch  of 
Maurice  Ripplemark,  author  of  The  Moral  Will, 
ex-airman,  ex-Professor  of  Virtue,  LL.D.  and  V.C. 
To  him  more  than  to  any  other,  always  excepting  the 
paramount  influence  of  My  Lady,  may  be  attributed 
the  process  of  absorption  by  which  the  Smokeover 
Branch  of  the  Society  for  Ethical  Culture  lost  its 
finite  self  in  the  larger  whole  of  that  nefarious  un- 

407 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

dertaking  which,  a  few  months  before,  it  had  peti- 
tioned both  Houses  of  Parliament  to  suppress. 
Hence,  also,  that  growing  desire  on  the  part  of  the 
local  University  to  co-operate  with  the  Firmj  hence 
that  growing  ambition  in  all  its  Professors  to  be 
transferred  to  the  world-wide  form  of  the  Service 
which  Rumbelow,  Hooker  &  Ripplemark  were  busy 
in  creating.  To  surround  the  undertaking  with  the 
University  atmosphere  was  indeed  no  small  part  of 
Ripplemark's  contribution  to  the  operations  of  the 
Firm,  a  result  which  might  never  have  been  achieved 
but  for  his  accession  to  the  Board.  He  himself  was 
thoroughly  at  homej  more  at  home,  he  would  often 
say,  in  his  Smokeover  office,  where  the  Moral  Will 
was  being  acted,  than  in  his  Oxford  lecture  room, 
where  he  used  to  discuss  its  implications.  Indeed  he 
would  thank  God  that  he  had  gone  into  business,  and 
with  especial  fervency  when  Margaret  was  working 
by  his  side.  At  these  monents  a  new  vision  of  relative 
values  would  break  forth  within  him.  He  could 
hardly  resist  the  belief  that  he  was  again  flying  at 
a  great  altitude,  the  mountains  beneath  him  no  bigger 
than  mole  hills  and  Smokeover  a  mere  smudge  on 
the  surface  of  the  earth.  Yet  all  this  time  the  lady 
in  the  sable  coat  was  firmly  persuaded  that  Ripple- 
mark had  stolen  her  pearls. 

Each  of  the  Directors  placed  the  whole  of  his 
capital  in  the  Firm.  Rumbelow's  stake  was  vastly 
in  excess  of  the  equal  portions  brought  in  by  the  other 
millionaires.  But  this  made  no  difference,  save  that 
the  bookmaker  was  voted  to  the  Chair  as  the  greatest 
Master  of  them  all  in  things  appertaining  to  the 
Sportsmanship  of  the  Spirit. 

408 


"LES  BEAUX  ESPRITS" 

Every  meeting  of  the  Board  brought  the  Five 
together  in  a  deeper  loyalty  to  one  another.  It  was 
observable,  too,  that  as  they  came  to  know  each  other 
better  a  kind  of  telepathy  grew  up  between  them, 
so  that  all  five  would  frequently  come  to  the  Board 
with  the  same  proposition  on  their  lips.  Nay,  it 
sometimes  happened  that  the  Five,  on  sitting  down 
to  the  table,  would  simultaneously  anticipate  the 
odds  for  the  day  before  they  had  been  reported  by 
the  Head  Mathematical  Expert,  which  seems  to 
suggest  that  telepathy  was  at  work  through  the  en- 
tire Office.  Margaret  was  the  first  of  the  Five  to 
notice  this  strange  phenomenon.  But  she  kept  these 
things  in  her  heart. 

She,  in  the  meantime,  worked  steadily  at  her  Play, 
the  hope  of  the  Firm  being  that  by  next  Christmas, 
or  by  the  next  after  that,  it  might  be  produced  in 
the  Hall  of  Silence  by  the  greatest  actors  of  the  day, 
and  all  Smokeover  invited  to  the  performance.  At 
first  she  had  found  the  theme  quite  unmanageable, 
the  scene  of  action  too  undefined,  the  time  data  too 
elusive,  the  forces  at  work  too  vast  and  amorphous 
to  submit  to  any  kind  of  concrete  personification. 
For  many  weeks  Margaret  was  buffeted  in  deep 
waters,  now  swept  by  violent  currents  out  to  sea, 
now  caught  in  whirlpools,  now  driven  towards  the 
black  rocks  where  dead  men's  bones  lay  whitening  in 
the  sun,  swimming  strongly,  but  doubting  if  she 
would  ever  make  the  land.  Then,  as  before,  her 
vision  contracted.  Why  not  dramatize  the  History 
of  the  Firm  itself,  the  clash  of  forces  out  of  which 
it  had  emerged,  the  interactions  of  its  personalities, 
and  of  all  the  Invisible  Powers,  dxmonic  and  divine, 

409 


THE  LEGENDS  OF  SMOKEOVER 

which  had  guided  its  destinies — thereby  holding  the 
mirror  up  to  civilization  itself?  From  the  moment 
she  shaped  it  thus,  the  Play  seemed  to  grow  and 
exfoliate  by  an  irresistible  impulse  from  within,  so 
that  she  suffered  no  further  check,  save  now  and 
then,  when  the  forces  her  art  would  control  seemed 
to  eet  out  of  hand  and  to  rush  onward  with  a  will  of 
their  own  towards  a  tragic  issue.  At  these  moments 
she  would  remember  that  the  odds  in  favour  of 
success  were  only  3  to  1.  Then  a  dark  foreboding 
would  overcast  her  and  she  would  lay  down  her 
pen. 

Mr.  Hooker  never  misses  a  meeting  of  the  Board. 
But  the  ineluctable  years  are  beginning  to  cell.  The 
stout  old  Puritan  has  fought  his  last  battle  against 
principalities  and  powers.  His  work  is  done.  Some- 
times he  forgets  the  question  on  the  table  and  seems 
to  be  conscious  of  nothing  save  My  Lady's  presence. 
Sometimes  he  fails  to  answer  when  spoken  to,  lost 
in  the  satisfaction  of  remembering  that  he  has  kept 
the  faith.  Or  again,  at  the  end  of  a  long  sitting, 
he  will  grow  weary  with  the  technicalities  of  business, 
fall  into  a  slumber  and  dream.  He  sees  his  wife 
running  forward  to  meet  him  with  her  arms  ex- 
tended. He  sees  his  sons  playing  tennis  in  the  clouds. 
Or  he  is  aboard  the  Ship  of  Great  Souls  j  winds  that 
make  no  ripple  on  the  sea  are  driving  it  forward  j 
My  Lady  is  at  the  helm  5  Billie  Smith  in  the  crow's- 
nest  has  just  sighted  land.  Then  a  sound,  faint  at 
first  but  coming  nearer,  breaks  out  from  all  points  of 
the  compass  5  and  the  pirates,  suspending  their 
labours,  gather  together  and  listen.  It  is  the  music 
and  dancing  of  an  immortal  world. 

410 


"LES  BEAUX  ESPRITS" 

The  Voice  had  no  more  to  say^  and  the  Author 
knew  that  the  Legends  of  Smokeover  were  at  an 
end.  He  knew  it  because,  as  the  last  word  was 
sfoken,  the  sequence  was  immediately  taken  up  by 
the  m^usic  and  dancing  which  Mr.  Hooker  was  hear- 
ing  in  his  dreams.  The  sound  lasted  for  a  m^oment 
only;  but  the  Author  recognized  the  climax.  So, 
turning  his  back  on  the  Bridge  and  on  the  River  of 
ForgetfulnesSy  he  placed  his  heavy  m^anuscript  under 
his  arm  and  fared  forward  into  the  Smokeover 
streets,  where  the  patter  of  ten  thousand  feet  be- 
tokened that  Man  was  going  forth  to  his  work  and 
to  his  labour  until  the  evening. 

As  he  hurried  to  his  hotel,  where  his  absence  all 
night  had  given  rise  to  some  alarm,  he  was  accosted 
by  a  schoolboy,  who  said,  in  the  most  musical  voice 
imaginable: 

"If  you  please,  sir,  would  you  mind  telling  me 
the  time." 

Moved  by  a  sudden  impulse  the  Author  asked 
the  boy  his  name,  and  learnt  that  it  was  Billie.  He 
then  took  out  his  watch;  but  there  was  no  need  to 
tell  Billie  the  time.  For  at  that  moment  the  great 
clock  of  Smokeover  Cathedral,  which  was  im- 
mediately overhead,  struck  the  hour;  and  the  deep 
tones  of  the  last  stroke  were  still  booming  in  the 
air  when  suddenly  there  broke  out  an  indescribable 
din  of  syrens,  hooters  and  steam-whistles,  of  bolts 
shot  back,  of  iron  shutters  thrown  up,  of  massive 
gates  turning  on  their  hinges,  of  doors  opened,  and 
of  m^ultitudes  thronging  in. .  The  day^s  work  had 
begun, 

411 


PRG0I9 


DATE  DUE 

CAYLORD 

PRINTED  IN  U.S.A. 

1 

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